Methodologies .

Getting it right is important. Polls cannot help you make the right strategic decisions unless they are accurate.

We are constantly innovating to adapt to the changing environment, update our methodology, and improve our ability to provide accurate results.

This accuracy is grounded in strong, proven methodological practices.

• Our polls reflect the likely electorate – not likely voters – meaning they include new registrants and people who haven’t voted in the past.
• We use multi-modal, voter-file based interviewing, including live interviews to landlines and cell phones, as well as text-to-web interviews where survey invites are sent to the cell phone number on the voter file via text – ensuring we’re reaching people where they are and using the mode to which they are most likely to respond
• We continually consult with leading academic researchers and other experts
• We listen to interviews while they are in the field to ensure they are being administered correctly
• We check our data extensively after each night of interviews
• We conduct “red team” analysis of our own work to ensure against tunnel vision by our project team.
• In states with early voting, we closely monitor the shape of the early electorate and match early voting data to our own polling data, whenever possible.

After campaigns are over, we conduct an exhaustive analysis of our past work to look for potential ways to improve our methodological approach. For example, we are now analyzing our 2020 results to determine how we can improve and better reach a representative sample of the electorate. This additional study of our past work ensures that we are able to fix our mistakes (while rare, they do happen), update our methodology when appropriate, and improve our ability to provide accurate results to our clients in the future.

Our commitment to the most stringent methodological standards has been recognized far and wide. In fact, we even were cited by Doonesbury.