Media Polls

News organizations conduct or sponsor public opinion research as part of their ongoing news coverage, including but not limited to election campaign coverage. Media polls, also called “news polls,” have attained wide prevalence as a reporting tool but also remain a focus of debate and occasional controversy. Media polls are a central part of what Philip Meyer has explained as “precision journalism.”

News may be denned as timely information, professionally gathered and presented, about events and conditions that affect or interest an audience. It can include what people do and also what people think. Polls provide a systematic means of evaluating both, elevating anecdote about behavioral and attitudinal trends into empirically based analysis.

News organizations long have reported—and continue to report—characterizations of public preferences without the use of polls, relying on expert (and sometimes inexpert) evaluations, informed (and sometimes uninformed) speculation, punditry, proselytizing, and conventional wisdom. Rigorous polling improves on these.

The media also have reported polls (rigorous and otherwise), whether provided by outside sources (e.g. government, academic, or corporate entities, interest groups, and public relations firms); syndicated or circulated by independent polling companies (in some cases for promotional purposes); or self-initiated. Only polls in the last category are classified as media polls, as opposed more broadly to polls reported by the media.

Media polls may best be understood as a means of covering a news beat—the beat of public opinion. In a process that in many ways closely reflects other news [Page 462]reporting, media pollsters, in their reportorial role, go to their best sources, ask their best questions, take down the answers, and report what they have learned. A key difference from other reporting is in the selection of sources, which, rather than either event dictated or arbitrary, is based (in rigorous polling) on a random probability sample of the population under study.

Good-quality media polls, then, represent good news reporting. Different from the retrospective approach more common in academic research, they most often provide for the immediate and timely evaluation of current events, adding a unique perspective that actively informs the public discourse as it helps make sense of a central element of the world around us—public attitudes and behavior.

Media polls are best known for their use in political coverage, whether pre-election polls measuring support for candidates and the attitudes, impressions, and policy preferences that inform those choices; or, outside election cycles, ongoing measurements of views on political performance and policies. The former is epitomized by, but by no means limited to, so-called horse race measurements of opposing candidates; the latter, by presidential approval and related measures. Both are staples of political coverage.

News organizations, however, also conduct surveys across many other issues, measuring a range of experiences, circumstances, preferences, and behaviors. Venturing far beyond politics and policy, media polls are conducted on social and economic matters, including consumer confidence, the environment, lifestyles, health, sports, popular culture, religious belief and practice, race relations, entertainment, interpersonal relationships, and more. Some news organizations also undertake international polling, even in conflict areas where measurement of public attitudes can be difficult yet is particularly vital, such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

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