Political Polling

Is political polling dead? In the campaign world, this is one question comes back to haunt us every election cycle After polls (and the media outlets reporting on them) suggested an inevitable landslide for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump’s victory shook the American public to its core and undermined our collective confidence in political polling.

Dave Fako founded Fako Research & Strategies (FR&S) in 1998. His career in politics, public policy, and government affairs spans over thirty years. Over his career, Dave Fako has developed strategies for statewide, congressional, state legislative, and municipal candidates, in addition to referendums, and has advised numerous public policy, advocacy organizations, and national and regional private sector companies.

Ruth Bernstein is president and CEO at EMC Research, a national polling and opinion research firm. Ruth leads polling on a wide variety of political, policy, and marketing projects. She is especially proud of her work helping to elect women and people of color to office and securing voter approval for education, transportation, minimum wage increases, and environmental protection. We asked Ruth 7 questions on membership surveys and how they can benefit your organization.

We’ve discussed in past blogs that a large part of executing a #winning political campaign is doing your background research, and ballot measure polling is the best way to find out if you can win and how you can win.

I am not a political pollster, and I don’t play one on T.V. But, I am a big consumer of political polling and spend a lot of time working with pollsters to craft political surveys. When it comes to creating a political survey, we often see folks make the same mistakes.

Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, Donna Victoria holds an undergraduate and master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Florida. She serves on the Board of Advisors for UF’s graduate degree program in Political Campaigning and Lectures on Political Polling and Survey Research to a variety of audiences.

Name recognition or Name ID, is usually judged by political polling to determine how many people know Candidate A vs. Candidate B. We start with a simple question that asks whether people have heard of either candidate. Then we compare the candidate’s name ID.