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More SurveyUSA Report Cards

Mark Blumenthal | February 21, 2008

Topics: 2008 , IVR Polls , John McCain , NY Times , Pollsters , SurveyUSA , Washington Post

Jay Leve and his crew at SurveyUSA have been busy this week. Following up on our discussion of their pollster report cards, SurveyUSA has a new and improved scorecard chart for individual states primaries (example for Florida Republicans with explanation here, example for Wisconsin Democrats here). The new state-level report card format includes eight different measures of error and a number of additional variables intended to help us "better understand the correlation between the methodological choices an election pollster makes and the results an election pollster produces."

• Length of field period.
• Proximity of poll release to election
• The number of undecided voters
• The number of respondents interviewed
• The sample source (if available)
• The interviewing technique (if available)
• The method of respondent selection (if available)

They also updated their "high-level" report cards (summarizing one measure of error for all final polls in 2008) to include polls from Wisconsin.

Finally, in another interesting innovation, they are also soliciting reader input on the McCain story:

What questions should SurveyUSA ask Americans in its polling today about today’s New York Times story, today’s Washington Post story, and John McCain’s response to it? We welcome your suggestions at editor@surveyusa.com.

By Mark Blumenthal | February 21, 2008 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)