Anthony Salvanto, Ph.D., is CBS News' executive director of elections and surveys. He oversees the CBS News Poll and all surveys across topics and heads the CBS News Decision Desk that estimates outcomes on election nights. Salvanto appears regularly across all CBS News broadcasts and platforms to explain and analyze CBS News polls, U.S. public opinion, voting and elections.
Salvanto is the author of "Where Did You Get This Number: A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World" (published by Simon & Schuster.) He has covered all the recent presidential and midterm congressional races and Americans' opinions on major topics of the day including how they've viewed the state of the nation, the economy, democracy, and the COVID-19 pandemic; issues ranging from views on parties and partisanship, immigration, international conflicts, finances, and more, all of it aimed at offering viewers and readers a more thorough understanding of the people and nation around them.
Through the CBS News Battleground Tracker, he and the Election and Survey Unit have presented viewers with comprehensive coverage of contests across all key states and districts through large-scale surveys and data models. He has identified and shown viewers potential scenarios in presidential and congressional elections, and the key influencer groups that go beyond the typical demographic breakdowns. On election nights, Anthony presents the real-time results by taking viewers directly inside the process at the CBS News Data Desk, for unique, up-to-the-minute looks at how the Desk is analyzing the results.
Salvanto's scholarly research and writings cover topics on American politics and elections, public opinion, voting behavior, and survey research methods. He is affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. Salvanto's Ph.D. in political science is from the University of California, Irvine, and he earned his B.A. from Tufts University. He joined CBS News in 2002.
