Political Polling

Information is crucial for candidates in political campaigns. This book, written by someone who has polled for 23 years, first focuses on the process of acquiring information during a campaign through polling. The book describes how to write questions, draw samples of voters, and conduct calling. The second major concern of the book is how to analyze results, and then interpret and present results in a way that will contribute to forming a strategy for a campaign. The book deals with the issues of biased questions and results, and why it is of no value to candidates to engage in such practices.

A good resource for learning how to analyze results and then intrepret and present them to campaigns in a way that will help inform strategy....Useful to those just starting careers in politics., Stonecash covers the practical aspects of polling in election campaigns, especially those for local office. The emphasis is on analytical approaches as much as on data collection, content that will be useful for those who want to understand better how candidates use data in deciding whether to run and in the organization of their strategy. Readers, especially students, will understand campaign polls better after reading this book.

Jeffrey Stonecash is professor of political science at Syracuse University.