BOR Initiating Monthly Presidential Tracking Poll

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Mon Mar 26, 2007 at 00:08 PM CDT

We all know how rare it is to find regular, methodologically comparable polling in our state. We hope to fill that gap for the next 10 months, basing our polling questions off of goals outlined by MyDD. We will be releasing our March Tracking Poll shortly and are open to offers by traditional media outlets to parter with our monthly polling (contact Matt at matt@burntorangereport.com).

IVR Polls is run by Ralph Bordie. While relatively new to the polling industry, Ralph has a background in performing statistical and data analysis for litigation, where multi-million dollar settlements depended on his methodology withstanding the scrutiny of opposing experts. He has worked on a number of campaigns going back to 1980, and as son of a Texas Senate Parlimentarian, he was soaking up political 'inside baseball' for years before that.

IVR Polls is a division of Forensic Economics Data Consulting, Inc. Polls for the 2006 cycle were released under the FEDCI name. His polling for the 2006 Texas 10th Congressional race was accurate to within 1% point a week out from the November elections. More information on his polling techniques can be found here and is included in the extended entry below.

IVR Polls uses automated IVR technology to survey voter populations with greater speed and lower cost than traditional phonebank polling. IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, a technique for interaction with a computer through a telephone keypad, usually in response to a recorded or synthesized voice.

There has been much discussion on the reliability of automated polls. Skeptics say that the computer can't tell whether a child is randomly punching buttons. This is true, but it is rarely the case. Adults have been known to lie to live pollsters as well, but in a full size sample, the rare outlier has little effect on the overall numbers. Independent reviews comparing automated polls to phonebank polls have shown that a well designed poll can produce accurate results using either method. Slate has a widely cited article comparing various pollster's numbers on the 2004 race. In that case, the automated polls beat the phonebank polls.

Phonebank polls can vary in quality from call to call. After a few hours on the phone, fatigue can affect the interviewer's delivery. With IVR polls, a question can be recorded several times until the inflection is perfect. Every call is made using this perfect recording, resulting in a uniform survey free of interviewer bias.

VoIP technology allows calls to be made at an extremely high rate. Voice is digitized and sent in small packets allowing many calls to be processed simultaneously. Equipping and staffing a call center to match our call volume would require significant overhead and raise costs. While residential VoIP calls can vary in quality due to the many 'hops' they must make on the way to their destination, IVR Polls uses dedicated servers located in datacenters with direct access to the main internet trunks. These trunks are then connected to phone company switches, allowing our calls to completely bypass the end user congestion that causes most VoIP quality issues.