September 09, 2020

The French-American Foundation hosted a virtual meeting of the Transatlantic Forum on Wednesday, September 9 at 6:00pm ET to discuss polling and the 2020 US presidential elections. The event featured two guest speakers from the Pew Research Center, Carroll Doherty (Director of Political Research) and Courtney Kennedy (Director of Survey Research, with expertise in research methodology), and moderator Rickey Bevington, Young Leader ’20 and Senior Anchor & Correspondent at Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Carroll Doherty: Carroll Doherty is director of political research at Pew Research Center. He plays a leading role in developing the Center’s research agenda and overseeing editorial content about long-term trends in political values, U.S. views on policy issues and priorities, and political knowledge and news interest. Doherty regularly provides analysis of public opinion and politics for domestic and international news outlets, including NPR, CNBC and the BBC. He also speaks to government, academic and business groups on these topics.

Courtney Kennedy: Courtney Kennedy is director of survey research at Pew Research Center. In this role, she serves as the chief survey methodologist for the Center, providing guidance on all of its research and leading its methodology work. Prior to joining Pew Research Center, Kennedy served as vice president of the advanced methods group at Abt SRBI, where she was responsible for designing complex surveys, developing data collection methodologies and assessing data quality. Her work has been published in Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology and the Journal of Official Statistics. She has worked as a statistical consultant on the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial census and on multiple reports appearing in Newsweek.

Rickey Bevington: Rickey Bevington is an internationally recognized journalist and speaker who believes that well-informed citizens are the bedrock of democracy. Her 2017 TEDx talk “The Future Of News Media Is In Our Hands” empowers viewers to combat fake news. Based in Atlanta, Bevington is a mainstay with Georgians as local host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Her radio and television stories have drawn honors from Edward R. Murrow Awards (2016, 2014), Southeast EMMYS (2014), Atlanta Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press.

Transatlantic Forum