After bad Brexit call, will online polls come of age?

Luke Skywalker · Jul 4, 2016

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A voter places his ballot into a collection box after filling it in at a polling center, on state primary election day, in Boulder, Colo., Tuesday, June 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) ORG XMIT: COBL101(Photo: Brennan Linsley, AP)

It's 2016 and the world has moved much of its business online. But not in the world of polling.
For years, landline calls were*the predominant vehicle of choice for pollsters, because they had access to a nationwide database of phone numbers and a diverse population. Everyone had a phone.
But landlines are going the way of the compact disc and film cameras. That, and a few recent high-profile*flubs like last month's*polls*that incorrectly showed the*United Kingdom would vote to stay in the European Union and*other*failures to accurately predict outcomes in both Democratic and Republican*U.S. presidential primaries have put online*pollsters*in a more intense*spotlight that may hasten the shift into how polls are done and create a bigger opportunity for companies in the space.
“If you look at the (Brexit)*phone polls, you had a solid miss,” says*Natalie Jackson, the senior polling editor for The Huffington Post.*The final result was 52%-48% for exiting the European Union. The world was stunned.
To be sure, purists say nothing but a phone is accurate — but the recent stumbles raise*questions about their accuracy and long-term viability. Not to mention, online polls tend to be faster and cheaper to produce than phone polls, which given the evolution of technology have already transitioned to mostly mobile phones and some landlines.
Polling is*a prolific, big*headline-grabbing business that has*come a long way since the days of surveys by mail, used most famously in the 1948 polls that incorrectly*showed President Harry Truman losing his re-election bid to New York Gov. Thomas Dewey.
Online pollster SurveyMonkey says it's on track to hit $200 million in revenue this year, while U.K.-based YouGov says it will generate*$55 million*for the first six months of the year, up 15% over the same period in 2015.*At The Huffington Post, Jackson*aggregates available political polls on the*website, currently topping 477.*But the number will keep growing, and will reach 1,000 or more by the time the election gets into full swing in the fall.
A MASSIVE TRANSFORMATION
Even though she prefers phone polls now, Courtney Kennedy, the director of research for the Pew Research Center, knows where the industry is headed.*“Eventually, all polls will be done online, later rather than sooner." How soon? "Certainly within the next 10 years.”
For this presidential election cycle, the most prominent polls announced by the news divisions of ABC, NBC and CBS and cable’s CNN and Fox News —*working with a variety of pollsters including*SSRS,*Anderson Robbins Research, Shaw & Company Research, Opinion Research Corporation and Langer Research Associates —*are still typically reported by calling 1,000 or so people on landlines and mobile phones.
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It's important to note that the ratio of mobile phones*has increased dramatically, since many people either don't have a landline anymore, or won't answer the phone in the caller ID era. It costs pollsters more to obtain mobile phone exchanges*and to make calls, which have to be done by hand, due to federal regulations. Landline calls can be dialed by computer.
But CBS and NBC have also entered the digital age this election cycle by*partnering with online pollsters YouGov and SurveyMonkey for additional polls. News organization Reuters does a daily online tracking poll as well, partnered with measurement firm Ipsos, and the Associated Press conducts online surveys with researcher GFK.
“We’re going through a massive transformation with how people communicate,” says Clifford Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs.*“Twenty years ago, everyone interacted with a landline phone. Now it’s rare that they’ll have a landline, and even rarer that they’ll pick it up.”
CBS and CNN declined to comment for this story.*ABC, NBC and Fox didn't return calls.
A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
One criticism traditionalists make of online polls is*recruiting*methods that offer something in return for participation.*Ipsos recruits by inviting folks to participate in a survey via websites and community forums they visit. Ipsos doesn't pay respondents directly, but offers a point system that lets them trade points for small items.
Rival YouGov advertises in online search ads, offering to pay small amounts of money —*under $15*—*to join the panels. "They wouldn't answer otherwise," says Douglas Rivers, YouGov's chief scientist, and a political science professor at Stanford University.*YouGov’s media partners include CBS, The Times of London and The Economist.
And SurveyMonkey, best known for consumer surveys to visitors of websites as diverse as Facebook, Kraft Foods and Salesforce.com, organizes panels for election polling from the same people who answer questions on consumer and business surveys. At the end of a survey, SurveyMonkey asks them to stick around and answer additional questions about the election. SurveyMonkey does an online survey every Tuesday for NBC News.

A demonstrator holds up a placard saying "Stand together Stop Brexit" at an anti-Brexit protest in Trafalgar Square in central London on June 28, 2016. EU leaders attempted to rescue the European project and Prime Minister David Cameron sought to calm fears over Britain's vote to leave the bloc as ratings agencies downgraded the country. Britain has been pitched into uncertainty by the June 23 referendum result, with Cameron announcing his resignation, the economy facing a string of shocks and Scotland making a fresh threat to break away. / AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images ORIG FILE ID: 553532140*(Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS, AFP/Getty Images)

From there, SurveyMonkey*weighs the respondents by age, demographics, education and the like. Some 2 million SurveyMonkey surveys in the United States are answered every day.
Indeed, Pew's*Kennedy*has been hearing talk about phone polls going away for years,*but she says they still have some life left in them.
“They’re not going away anytime soon,” she says. “They have some real advantages over online.”*Notably, 11% of U.S. households don't**have Internet access.*”They’re left out,”she says. And phone polls do a better job reaching minority voters. Seniors are more easily reached on landlines.
THE BEST WAY?*A*MATTER OF DEBATE
Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, says the use of phones —*both landlines and mobile phones —*are more efficient for getting a representative sampling of the public*because they reach a wider range of people.
“We think the traditional method of using human beings to make calls is the best way,” he says, for a simple reason —*not everyone is online.
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The Internet polls skew to a higher demographic, he adds. “The key to good polling is a random sampling of voters.”
David Scott, political editor for the Associated Press, says it doesn’t matter whether the poll is done online or via phone, but what methodology is being used.
As long as it's a scientifically, randomly selected panel, that's "the best way to go about it,” he says.
During this primary season, most polls got pretty close to the final results*but were wrong*in Iowa, where Republican businessman Donald Trump was projected to win the caucus —*rival Sen. Ted Cruz ended up winning. In*Michigan, Democratic senator Bernie Sanders had a big, surprise win over rival Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State.
And, of course, some traditional pollsters had egg on their face last week in the U.K.'s*Brexit*referendum, which was touted as a close race by online pollsters. Critics say the*returns swung differently mostly because the collective media bought the overall assessment, which was that the "remain" camp was ahead by a wider gap.*Several pollsters reported*large margins for the U.K.*staying with the EU, including ORB International (7 percentage points, with*53%-46%) and 48%-42%, 6 percentage points,*from ComRes.
At 51% (for "remain") to 49%,*“we were well within the margin of error,” says Rivers the YouGov chief scientist and Stanford political science professor.*“Anyone who tells you that phone polls are still fine*should look at the phone*result.”
Follow USA TODAY tech columnist and #TalkingTech host Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham.*

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After bad Brexit call, will online polls come of age?

Luke Skywalker

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