Polling: Understanding the Basics
Do you support the sale of legal cannabis in New Jersey?
Pork roll or Taylor ham?
Which direction do you tend to lean on the political spectrum?
These simple questions are all examples of real polls that have been conducted by institutes and organizations such as the Stockton Polling Institute, NJ.com, and Gallup.
According to the Pew Research Center, the word “poll” originated in the late 1800s as a synonym for “head.” Back then, simply counting heads at a rally or meeting was the easy, quick, and accurate way to determine the public’s opinion.
Today, Merriam-Webster defines the word poll as, “a questioning or canvassing of persons selected at random or by quota to obtain information or opinions to be analyzed.” The goal of polling as stated in a Gallup article is to “measure the public’s views regarding a particular topic or series of topics.”
Of course, modern polls are much more complicated than a simple in-person head count. The method of public opinion polling has changed drastically over the years, following the advancement of technology. Now polls are conducted by knocking on doors, calling individuals, or on the internet.
Alyssa Maurice, research associate at the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University spoke with CivicStory to provide some insight into the world of polling.
CivicStory: What is your role at the Stockton Polling Institute?
Alyssa: I am the Research Associate at the William J Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University. One aspect of my role as the research associate is managing the Stockton Polling Institute so I develop the questionnaires, do the sampling design, and the analysis, and basically handle our polling operation from start to finish.
CivicStory: Who typically runs the polls that are conducted around the state?
Alyssa: I am most familiar with the academic pollsters (Rutgers University, Monmouth University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Stockton University).
CivicStory: What is the process of creating, conducting, and publishing the findings of polls?
Alyssa: The fundamental element is developing a quality questionnaire. It’s super important that your questionnaire is fair and unbiased and you are asking the questions in a way that does not lead a respondent to a particular answer.
Then you have to build your sample. The purpose of a poll is to explain what the population you’re studying thinks about something but of course, we can’t reach millions of New Jerseyans individually so we have to do this by surveying a smaller number of people who represent the larger population. The idea is that you survey a random selection of people throughout New Jersey to get a representative sample.
On top of that random selection, there are statistical methods we can use to help ensure that the sample we interviewed reflects the state. We consider key characteristics like race, gender, ethnicity, education, and so on to make sure that our sample looks like New Jersey overall.
CivicStory: What is a common source of error when conducting polls?
Alyssa: One thing that has become an issue even more so in recent years is that not everyone answers the phone, right? There are plenty of people who aren't going to answer an unknown number… and there could be some differences between the people who don’t answer the phone and the people who do answer. So if their views are systematically different that could be a problem because we are not capturing the people we can’t reach. That is called non-response bias.
CivicStory: How do you decide on a topic for a poll?
Alyssa: We always want to make sure our poll results are useful to the public or useful to decision-makers. We want to make sure we're asking about timely topics and to give people a voice in the conversations that are happening at that time.
CivicStory: Which topics are most commonly covered in the polls?
Alyssa: People are most familiar with the pre-election polls. That’s what we see a lot of especially during election seasons. Those are what you see in the headlines often but there are so many other polls happening. Our polls are issue polls which are about a wide range of topics that are relevant to people.
In recent years the focus has been on polling as a means of election forecasting but it's really a tool to give people a voice on other important topics too. I don't want people to lose sight of that when they see so many headlines about the horse race polls.
CivicStory: How do polls influence public opinion and news coverage?
Alyssa: I don’t necessarily think they influence public opinion as much as they reflect public opinion. That’s really the goal, we’re trying to capture public opinion and not influence it.
It worries me when people are sort of dismissive of public opinion polls because of, you know, misses in recent elections because polling is really aimed at serving the people and giving them a voice.
CivicStory: What is something that the general public should know about polling?
Alyssa: Do your due diligence and look at them critically to really see if you are looking at a quality poll. It is important that we pull back the curtain and talk about how polling works to build trust and make people feel more comfortable participating in polls. Some things you can look at are who conducted the poll, how were people selected for the poll, was the poll weighted and on what, and so on. Read the poll questions so you can judge for yourself if they are neutral and fair.
Interview conducted and condensed by Amanda Wallace