These frequently asked questions and their answers were borrowed from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in an effort to keep the readers of the Pack Poll informed about our practices.

Some General Questions

1. Why am I never called to be polled?
2. Can I volunteer to be polled?
3. Why don’t your surveys ever reflect the opinions of people I know?
4. Why should I participate in surveys?
5. What good are polls?
6. I’m on a “Do Not Call” list. Doesn’t that prevent you from calling me?
7. Do pollsters have a code of ethics? If so, what is the code?
8. How are political polls different from market research?

Collecting Survey Data

1. How did you get my number?
2. How are people selected for your polls?
3. What if I only have a cell phone — am I represented in your surveys?
4. Don’t you have trouble getting people to answer your polls?
5. Why don’t you just conduct surveys on your website?
6. What about people who don’t have telephone service?

Election Polling

1. Are election polls accurate?
2. How do you know who is really going to vote?
3. Does an early lead in the polls usually hold up?
4. What is a post-convention “bounce”?
5. So who’s ahead in the polls?
6. What is the “generic ballot’ test?
7. Are generic Congressional vote measures less accurate in presidential years?

Questionnaire Design

1. Do people lie to pollsters?
2. Do people really have opinions on all of those questions?
3. Why do you typically ask presidential approval first in the survey?
4. Why are demographic questions asked at the end of the survey?
5. What’s all this rotating and randomizing going on in your questionnaires?
6. How is form one different from form 2?