Azia: Hey Guys! Today, Wildlife Disappearing from Our Planet, Plus a Whirlwind World Series

Azia: Hey guys! Today, wildlife disappearing from our planet, plus a whirlwind World Series. I am Azia Celestino, and Channel One News starts right now.

Five days to go till Americans head to the polls and pick the next president. And this election definitely has been one for the books. Some are calling it the most vicious in the history of our country. Along with headlines and nonstop coverage, there is one word that is being thrown around a lot — I am sure you guys have heard it. Tom Hanson fills us in.

Tom: All right, all right, we get it! Polls are important. Some live by them; others don't trust them and even despise them. We checked in with members of our Team OneVote on the issue.

Kai: In the past few months, I have come to the understanding that polling really can be inaccurate. It’s statistically impossible to get a 100-percent accurate poll.

Malcolm: I’m naturally skeptical of every poll that is released because it’s difficult to get appropriate representation of the nation’s population.

Tom: How important are polls to the election?

Dan Cassino: Well, polls tell the candidates where they are standing, and the candidates are going to shape all of their strategies based on what they see in the polls.

Tom: But where do the numbers come from?

Cassino: The whole idea of polls is we don't have to ask everyone. For a poll of a state, poll of a city, or a poll of the entire world, we need to ask somewhere between 800 and 1,200 people to find out what the entire world thinks about something. I don't need to ask everyone.

Tom: He is talking about something called a "sample size." Mathematically — if done at random with a large enough sample size — polls can give a good representation of the population overall.

So 800 to 1,200 people to represent a population of, you know, millions and millions and millions. How can you be sure that that actually holds up?

Cassino: Well, that's actually the beauty of polls is we can never be entirely sure that our results are holding up, so every poll result you see will have a margin of error attached to it.

Tom: Ah yes, that little thing called the margin of error — how far off a poll could be. For example, if the margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent, that is mathematically how far off the poll could be.

1 | P a g e Cassino: So the bigger your sample size, the smaller that margin of error is. But there's always the possibility that you just got a weird sample because, guess what? There’s 300 million people in this country. You called 1,000 of them.

Tom: Pollsters work the math, adjusting for demographics, likely voters, who has phones and who is likely to answer their questions — even if anyone will answer their phones at all.

Cassino: The gold standard in polling is still telephone polls. And 20 years ago, 30 years — wasn't a problem. When pollsters were calling 100 people 30 years ago, about 80 of them would pick up the phone and talk to us. Today, it's about 9 percent of people pick up the phone and talk to us.

Tom: So you get rejection a lot.

Cassino: Well, most of the time, you don’t get rejected; rather, what happens is they see the — they see something on the caller ID, and they go, "Ah, not interested."

Tom: Yeah, I do it.

Cassino: Of course you do, and most people do, and you're screwing up our numbers! Thank you very much.

Tom: And a poll is just a snapshot in time, and things can change a day or even a minute later. For example, just over a week ago, an ABC/”Washington Post” poll showed Clinton with a 12-percent lead over Trump, but then yesterday, that same polling group had them tied.

Even then, they sometimes just get it flat-out wrong. This summer in the United Kingdom, polls showed that people did not support Brexit, which was the proposal to leave the European Union. But on Election Day, the results showed a majority of voters did support Brexit.

Then there are the online polls, which are not scientific because people choose to take them versus being approached at random. And some websites have a following that leans one way or another politically naturally. But you will see some campaigns point to them if they are in their favor, but they are not an accurate reflection of the overall public.

Aah! All this talk about polls — I can't take it anymore! There must be some sound advice this expert has.

2 | P a g e Cassino: Never pay attention to individual polls. Individual polls, as we already said, have a 5-percent chance that they're just wrong. What we normally look at is what’s called the pollster average. So we go back, and there’s a bunch of websites that will tell you what is the average of all the polls that have come down.

Tom: So it is almost like a poll of the polls.

Cassino: Exactly. And so that gets rid of the fact that some polls are just gonna be weird.

Tom: Whew, a pollster telling us only to trust a poll that polls the individual polls collectively. I think I got it. Back to the studio.

Azia: Whoa. Okay, mind blown. Thanks, Tom.

All right, after the break, a discovery of biblical proportions.

Azia: Time to take a look at what else is making news, and a new report out says two-thirds of the wildlife on our planet could be gone by 2020 if we don't do something about it soon.

The report by the World Wildlife Fund says there has already been a 58-percent decline in fish, mammals, birds and reptiles worldwide since 1970. To prevent it, humans must cut pollution and stop destroying animals’ habitats. The report is based on data the WWF, a conservation group, collects by monitoring more than 1,400 animal populations.

But some called the report "complicated" because, while it is true that many species of wild animals are declining, the overall conclusion was too simple, and it shouldn't group all animals together. Also, the report was not peer-reviewed, as it would have been if it were published in a scientific journal.

Okay, next up, an amazing discovery was found by archaeologists in Israel. While shooting a documentary with “National Geographic,” they believe they found the burial slab where the body of Jesus is said to have been placed after his death.

It is the holiest site in Christianity, deep inside Jerusalem's Old City — the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the very tomb where Jesus Christ is believed to have been buried.

Footage from the documentary shows how archaeologists sorted through layers of marble, plaster and debris, showing centuries of damage and rebuilding — like peeling back layers of an onion — when they finally discovered this, a marble slab with a cross carved into its surface, and the original limestone burial bed.

Fredrik Hiebert: It was amazing to see a cross right on the spot where we were looking.

3 | P a g e Azia: After 60 hours the tomb was sealed back up for conservation, perhaps never to be reopened again.

All right, sports fans, this one is for you. It has been a nail-biter of a World Series, coming to a head last night with both teams tied at three games each going into an intense, winner-takes-all Game 7. But in the end, Chicago took home the victory. It was an unbelievable end to an unbelievable World Series.

After going into extra innings, the Chicago Cubs dominated last night in Game 7, winning the World Series Championship against the Cleveland Indians. The last time the Cubs won the World Series was back in 1908, so it is no wonder fans went crazy after the big win.

Have you ever wondered why it is called the World Series? See if you know the answer at ChannelOne.com.

Okay, after the break, some teens going the extra mile for a good cause.

Azia: It is a pretty sad statistic for man's best friend: Nearly 4 million dogs end up in animal shelters every year.

Keith: Yeah, Azia, those shelters help dogs that have been abandoned, abused and neglected. But the dogs are often kept in small cages, not able to move around much. That is why one California shelter came up with a creative idea to change that and found a perfect pairing. Take a look.

Josh Menusa: And the moment he saw me, oh, he starts crying, and I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, he just needs to come with us."

Keith: Sixteen-year-old Josh Menusa is talking about his terrier, named Fred. They are inseparable, and they love running together — a perfect match for a cross-country runner.

Luis Escobar: You've got a bunch of dogs that are in cages and want to be outside running, and I've got a group of high school students that love to run.

Keith: That is how this program started at a California animal shelter. Organizers paired up dogs that love to run with teens on the cross-country team.

Stacy Silva: These are dogs! They want to run; they want to play.

Keith: When these teens from St. Joseph High in California first ran with the shelter dogs in August, Coach Escobar posted a 60-second video.

Escobar: It was millions and millions of views and shares.

4 | P a g e Keith: At the end of that video, Josh holds a tired pup named Fred. A week later, he came back to the shelter to take her home.

The ultimate goal is to raise awareness about the hardships of shelter animals, but the connection is real.

Sequoia: When we have to put him back, it's kind of like, “I'm really sorry about this, but hopefully, you'll get adopted."

Keith: And shelter leaders say it may help do just that.

Silva: It doesn't have all this pent-up energy that it's trying to show you just because now you're paying attention to it. It makes a huge difference.

Keith: A rough run for these dogs turned into a new journey of the heart and soles for these students. Keith Kocinski, Channel One News.

Azia: Awesome story. Thanks, Keith.

Okay guys, that is all for now. Have a great day, and we will see you right back here tomorrow.

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