The Ebb and Flow of the Political Tide

Pollfish is leveraging the world’s largest consumer survey network to deliver results that are timely, accurate, and come at a much lower cost than other comparable methods.

In this critical presidential election year in the United States, Pollfish has teamed up with our friends Sharad Goel and Tobias Konitzer at Stanford, and David Rothschild at Microsoft Research and PredictWise to monitor the American public’s opinion on 11 key political issues. The project, which represents a brand new political survey method, is described in detail at PredictWise.

We will survey 1,000 Americans weekly, using these political survey methods, on important issues including Abortion, Discrimination, Income Inequality, Gun Control, Immigrants, Foreign Policy, Maternity Leave, Medicare, Government Regulation, Taxes, and Global Warming to gather the most up-to-date information on voters’ policy attitudes.

Rothschild added that “the Pollfish technology is going to help us learn new and meaningful things about public opinion and the effect of the multi-billion dollar election campaign on it.”

Key findings and results will be posted here, which will display the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of the Pollfish in-application survey network to gather public opinion within the margin of error.

Political Survey Methodology

For the last several decades, market research methodologies—from random digit dialing, to online panels, to river sampling— have struggled to remain relevant. As qualified users move away from the old ways of doing things in favor of a faster, more mobile lifestyle, polling has struggled to keep up.

In fact, most pollsters are still using land line phone calls as a part of their strategies. This simply won’t cut it.

Pollfish has replaced random-digit-dialing, providing a mobile solution and offering incentives to already-engaged mobile app users to get survey results.

These results were tested on the Brexit vote and the Greek Referendum, where Pollfish correctly predicted both outcomes.

Learn more about the Pollfish survey methodology.