Pollster.com: Disclosure

Archive:
Disclosure

February 29, 2008

Last fall, I asked all of the organizations that conducted Iowa Caucus surveys to disclose the demographic composition of their samples and several other aspects of their methodology. Although cooperation was mixed, our "disclosure project" demonstrated how polls that are...

February 07, 2008

A New York Times Op-Ed...and an Eplogue

I am honored to report that I have op-ed column in today's New York Times on a subject that will be familiar to regular readers: The need for better disclosure of methodological details by pollsters. I hope you will go...

December 28, 2007

Times/Bloomberg IA Poll - What % of Adults?

Here are some additional details on the new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in Iowa. The last Times/Bloomberg poll in September drew a sample of "caucus voters" that represented a much larger slice of the Iowa population than other polls. The...

December 17, 2007

Re: Disclosure Project: Results from Iowa

Last week's Disclosure Project report produced two good questions worthy of follow-up. Q: Given then almost complete lack of overlap in the way pollsters are defining likely caucus goers, how useful are poll averages? Good question. Averaging polls with differing...

December 12, 2007

Disclosure Project: Results from Iowa

It is time -- actually long past time -- to summarize the returns from the Pollster.com "Disclosure Project." Back in September I declared my intent to request disclosure of key methodological details from pollsters doing surveys in Iowa, New Hampshire,...

November 20, 2007

HuffPo's OfTheBus Polling Project

This morning, the Huffington Post has announced it's OffTheBus Polling Project that aims to scrutinize pollsters -- "an industry devoted to scrutinizing us" -- by created a forum for survey respondents to report and share their experiences. Here is how...

November 15, 2007

Polling Nevada

I have been focusing heavily on the Iowa caucuses, both our Disclosure Project started with polls there and because the competition, particularly on the Democratic side, is so intense. With a Democratic debate in Nevada tonight, we have had...

October 30, 2007

Re: Details on the New University of Iowa Poll

Sorry to blog one more time on the University of Iowa "Hawkeye" poll, but we want to clarify a few issues. Attentive readers may have noticed that we added the latest results from the Hawkeye poll to our Democratic...

October 29, 2007

Details on the New University of Iowa Poll

As promised, we have a new Iowa poll today. But be sure you read the fine print below. Let's start with the basic "poll update" that the estimable Eric Dienstfrey usually posts in this space. A new University of...

October 09, 2007

About that Des Moines Register Iowa Poll

NBC's First Read said it best: No Iowa poll "gets (and deserves) more attention than the Des Moines Register poll by ace Iowa pollster Ann Selzer." That reputation was earned, in part, from their final 2004 pre-caucus survey, the...

October 09, 2007

How Many Calls Per Minute?

Last week, the InsiderAdvantage poll released new surveys of 6,357 likely Republican primary voters in five states all conducted in just two nights, October 2-3, 2007. This feat prompted reader Chantal to ask some reasonable questions: Maybe I'm missing...

October 02, 2007

When Pollsters Attack: Epilogue

Nearly two weeks ago, just before we kicked off our Disclosure Project, InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery used a syndicated column headlined "What's a Quinnipiac?" to attack the Florida polls conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Towery not only...

October 01, 2007

A Different Perspective on Disclosure

Last Friday, in my semi-regular "remainders" wrap of interesting poll blogs of the week, I neglected to link to an interesting column from Kathy Frankovic of CBS News, which has an interesting twist on our recent focus on disclosure....

October 01, 2007

September 28, 2007

Disclosure Project Update

Since kicking off our Disclosure Project on Monday, we are pleased to report some very favorable early mentions and links from a variety of bloggers including The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, Time's Ana Marie Cox, USA Today's Memmott and Lawrence,...

September 25, 2007

On Plouffe's Memo and the Disclosure Project

A public memo circulated today by the Obama campaign and authored by campaign manager David Plouffe (via Marc Ambinder) argues that "Iowa is fundamentally a close three-way race with Obama, Clinton and Edwards all within the same range in...

September 20, 2007

When Pollsters Attack

A few hours ago, we posted results from two new surveys of likely primary voters in Florida, both sponsored by the Southern Political Report. One survey was conducted by InsiderAdvantage (which is essentially part of the Southern Political Report)...

September 10, 2007

What Are the Demographics?

Before my vacation in August, I used two posts to review the sorry state of disclosure with respect to how tightly (or not-so-tightly) the pollsters screen for likely primary voters, especially those in early primary or caucus states. Today...

August 31, 2007

August 30, 2007

Iowa: A Tale of Two New Polls

So today we have another installment in that pollster's nightmare known as the Iowa caucuses: Two new polls of "likely Democratic caucus goers" conducted over the last ten days that show very different results. The American Research Group (ARG)...

August 08, 2007

Screens & RDD: The ABC/Post Survey

It was probably Murphy's Law. Within hours of my posting a review of the sorry state of disclosure of early primary poll methodology, ABC News and The Washington Post released a new survey of likely caucus goers in Iowa...

August 03, 2007

How Tight is the Screen? Part II

I want to pick up where I left off on Tuesday, when I wrote about the way national surveys screen for primary voters. How well have the pollsters in early primary states done in disclosing how tightly they "screen"...

July 31, 2007

How Tight is the Screen? Part I

The questions we seem to get most often here at Pollster, either in the comments or via email, concern the variability we see in the presidential primary polls, especially in the early primary states. Why is pollster A showing...

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