Why Conduct Public Opinion Polling?

Why Conduct Public Opinion Polls?

A frequently used type of poll is the public opinion poll. The reason for this is that it serves as a consistently reliable measure of public opinion, which has benefits for businesses, organizations, candidates, media, and government.

Choose who gets specific questions

Public opinion polls let you tailor followup questions based on previous responses.

For example, your poll might have a question about support for a pending project or initiative in your area. Those who answer that they do support the project or initiative can get followup questions about why they support it, and those who answer that they oppose the project or initiative can get followup questions about why they oppose it. By using branching this way, you get clear information about both where people stand and why.

Choose who is polled

When having a public opinion poll conducted, you get to choose who is polled, ensuring that you get the views of the groups that are most important to you.

For example, you may want people from across the country to take the poll, or you may want to limit those who can take the poll to a specific state, district, county, or city. You can even limit respondents by gender, age, income, and other demographic factors.

Easy-to-reference data

Even if you decide to poll everyone in a specific area, or all registered voters in that area, you can still get breakdowns of the data in easy-to-reference crosstabs. Crosstabs let you see how all respondents answered each question of the poll, but also how just women answered each question, how just men answered each question, and how specific age groups, ethnic groups, and areas responded to each question.