The New York chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research presents ...

The Learning Curve of Polling From the 2010 Elections

With the midterm elections behind us, it’s time for a look back at the pre-election polling that was conducted in the lead-up to November 2.  What challenges did pollsters who were tracking public opinion face?  What, if any, were our successes?

National polls have limitations in midterm years: they don’t tell us much about the outcome of the individual House and Senate races.  However, they do tell us about the mood of the electorate, and help us to identify trends that may influence the voting on Election Day.

There is a high demand in the media for individual state polls as well, and it seemed state polls were released nearly every day – in some cases by new survey organizations seeking to make their reputation during election season.  Separating the polls with sound methodologies that use established survey techniques from the poorly-done polls was a major challenge for the media and observers of political polling.

Tea Party candidates, turnout among voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008, the impact of the President on vote choice, the growth of cell phone-only households – these were some of the issues pollsters grappled with this fall.

Sarah Dutton, Director of Surveys at CBS News, and Geoff Feinberg, Team Leader of the AP-GfK Poll will address these issues and more.  Each will explain how their polling organization has addressed the unique methodological and editorial challenges of conducting pre-election polls in a midterm election cycle.