An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster.
An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. A similar poll conducted before actual voters have voted is called an entrance poll. Pollsters – usually private companies working for newspapers or broadcasters – conduct exit polls to gain an early indication as to how an election has turned out, as in many elections the actual result may take hours to count.
A push poll is an interactive marketing technique, most commonly employed during political campaigning, in which an individual or organization attempts to manipulate or alter prospective voters' views under the guise of conducting an opinion poll. Large numbers of voters are contacted with little effort made to collect and analyze voters' response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as an opinion poll. Push polls may rely on innuendo, or information gleaned from opposition research on the political opponent of the interests behind the poll.
Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy is an independent polling firm that conducts voter surveys for news media, lobbyists, advocacy groups, trade associations, and political action committees. Mason-Dixon is the nation's most active state polling organization, conducting copyrighted public opinion polls for news media organizations in all 50 states. These media clients include over 250 local television affiliates and over 100 daily newspapers. The polling firm tends to slightly lean conservative and has a B+ rating according to FiveThirtyEight.
Elway Research, Inc.is a Seattle-based public opinion research firm. Since 1975, Elway Research has research projects for major corporations, media outlets, associations, foundations, campaigns and governmental agencies at all levels.
Gallup, Inc. is an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Starting in the 1980s, Gallup transitioned its business to focus on providing analytics and management consulting to organizations globally. In addition to its analytics, management consulting, and Gallup Poll, the company also offers educational consulting, the CliftonStrengths assessment and associated products, and business and management books published by its Gallup Press unit.
Rasmussen Reports is an American polling company founded in 2003. The company engages in political commentary and the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information. Rasmussen Reports conducts nightly tracking, at national and state levels, of elections, politics, current events, consumer confidence, business topics, and the United States president's job approval ratings. Surveys by the company are conducted using a combination of automated public opinion polling involving pre-recorded telephone inquiries and an online survey. The company generates revenue by selling advertising and subscriptions to its polling survey data.
FiveThirtyEight, sometimes rendered as 538, is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college, was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus.
The Quinnipiac University Poll is a public opinion polling center based at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. It surveys public opinion in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and nationally. The poll is unaffiliated with any academic department at the school and is run by Quinnipiac's public relations department.
Public Policy Polling (PPP) is an American polling firm affiliated with the Democratic Party. Founded in 2001 by businessman Dean Debnam, the firm is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Debnam currently serves as president and CEO of PPP, while Tom Jensen serves as the firm's director.
The Marist Poll, founded in 1978, is a national public opinion poll operated by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion (MIPO) on the campus of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The poll was one of the first college-based public opinion polls in the United States. MIPO regularly measures public opinion, both in New York State and across the country. In 2020, polls were conducted in Arizona, Florida, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. The Marist Poll is highly respected, with an 'A' rating from ABC News' FiveThirtyEight, and is often cited by journalists and pundits around the world.
A poll aggregator is an entity that tracks and aggregates, often but not exclusively by averaging, individual polls conducted by different organizations in order to gauge public sentiment on key civic issues such as the approval rating of a major political figure, or legislative body; or to measure likely public support for an individual candidate or political party in an upcoming election.
The Monmouth University Polling Institute is a public opinion research institute located on the Monmouth University campus in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The Polling Institute was established in 2005, and since its establishment has been led by director Patrick Murray.
Survation is a polling and market research agency based in London, England. Survation have been conducting research surveys since 2010. Surveys are conducted via telephone, online panel and face to face as well as omnibus research for a broad range of clients including television, newspapers, charities, lobby groups, trade unions, law firms and political parties. Damian Lyons Lowe is the company founder and Chief Executive.
The Suffolk University Political Research Center is an opinion polling center at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts.
American Research Group, Incorporated is a U.S. opinion polling and marketing research company based in Manchester, New Hampshire, and founded in 1985. The president is Lafell Dickinson Bennett, known as Dick Bennett, who was the pollster for presidential candidate John B. Anderson in 1980.
J. Ann Selzer is an American political pollster who is the president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company, which she founded in 1996. Her polls of Iowa voters have a reputation for being highly accurate, based on their performance in major elections from 2008 through 2020. She has been described as "the best pollster in politics" by Clare Malone of FiveThirtyEight, which also gives Selzer & Company a rare A+ grade for accuracy.
Change Research is a polling firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was first incorporated as a public benefit corporation in July 2017 by Mike Greenfield, a former data scientist at PayPal and LinkedIn, and Pat Reilly, a former Democratic Party campaign operative. Unlike many other pollsters, Change Research conducts all of its polls online. It claims to offer accurate and inexpensive online polling. Its clients have included Democratic political candidates such as Lauren Underwood, who won a race in Illinois's 14th congressional district in 2018, as well as organizations such as the NAACP and AFL–CIO. In 2021, FiveThirtyEight ranked Change Research a "B−" for its historical accuracy and polling methodology and noted that it called 75% of races correctly.
The Trafalgar Group is an opinion polling and survey company founded by Robert Cahaly and based in Atlanta, Georgia. It first publicly released polls in 2016. Trafalgar has been questioned for its methodology and for an apparent bias towards the Republican Party.
