Polling is everywhere these days, so much so President Trump comments on it constantly knowing they can make or break a political campaign. 

I've been doing this job for more than a decade now and I've reported on countless polls, but to tell the truth, I'm not even quite sure how polls work and how they're put together. To learn more, I went to Siena College to meet with Siena Research Institute Director Don Levy. 

"The interest in polling, I don't think has ever been greater," Levy said. "There's a thirst for the information."

But putting a poll together is actually harder than it's ever been before. In the past, everyone had landline phones and now, many of us just have cell phones. And, often when we see a weird number we don't recognize and don't answer. Siena polls address this, including a mix of landline and cell phone calls. 

"Today, fewer people even pick up the phone than ever before," Levy said. 

Has that made it harder to put out an accurate poll? 

"That's made it harder for us to conduct the poll," Levy said. "As [of] yet, our accuracy hasn't been damaged."

But you might be asking yourself, why am I never polled? Levy jokes he'd like your number, but really, it's a matter of probability. 

"There are 19 million New Yorkers, there are 11 million New Yorkers who are registered to vote," Levy said. "A typical poll we're seeking to get 800 interviews. So the odds are that we won't necessarily call you. There are more of you than there are interviews we're conducting."

And here's the other aspect to this: How the general public voters learn about polls is from people like me — reporters — and a lot of us fall back on treating this like it's football. There's a lot more to polling than who is up and who is down. 

"There's an over-fascination with the horse race and there's a tendency to turn it into a sporting event," Levy said. "There's so much more that people are interested in, that they care about, and that actually, I give the public credit for it — [for] how they're using it to make their decision. How they feel about issues, matter."

Levy says polls ultimately offer us a snapshot in time, a view of how voters feel or think at a given moment.