Partisan Firms Find Common Ground in GW Battleground Poll

By Julia Parmley

As the presidential campaign has intensified, so has the workload for the pollsters behind The George Washington University Battleground Poll, who are conducting more than 200 interviews nightly with potential voters in an effort to assess not just who leads the race but why.

Founded in 1991, the Battleground Poll is a collaborative bipartisan survey produced by Republican polling firm The Tarrance Group and its Democratic counterpart Lake Research Partners. The poll has examined the political climate through four presidential and three mid-term election cycles. In 2004, Battleground proved the most accurate presidential tracking poll in the nation.

In non-election years, more than 1,000 likely voters are surveyed nationwide for the poll, which is typically released two to four times annually. With the presidential election looming, the poll has been releasing weekly results since Sept. 7.

Lake Research Partners President Celinda Lake says the poll’s purpose is to engage the public and the press about the “who, what, where, and why” of elections.

“The GW-Battleground Poll is not just about superficial numbers and the horserace but about what’s really going on and how people look strategically at polling,” says Lake. “Polls often just show who is ahead, but the GW-Battleground Poll also shows if their lead is due to character, experience, or issues like the economy, as well as if the opinions are from men, women, older voters, or younger voters.”

This year marks the fifth year GW has sponsored the poll with Graduate School of Political Management Dean Christopher Arterton serving as poll moderator. The University also holds the poll’s data archives since 1991.
Brian Nienaber, vice president of The Tarrance Group, has been involved with the poll since 2002. To prepare for the 2008 presidential election, he says the firms are conducting hundreds of phone interviews a night to track public opinion until Election Day. Every Wednesday night, the latest 800 interviews are collected and analyzed for release on Thursday morning. He stresses the importance of collecting data nightly because of slight day-to-day changes in public opinion.

Lake says the firms determine who to poll through random digit dialing as well as from voter lists. She says they also use the “last birthday method,” meaning they ask to speak with the person who most recently celebrated his or her birthday.

To accurately gauge public opinion, the pollsters ask interviewees a variety of questions, including whether they have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the presidential and vice presidential candidates; who can best handle hot-button issues, such as reducing gas and energy prices and reform health care; and what issue they feel Congress should focus on the most.

The questions are developed jointly by the two firms, which also examine the polling data together but analyze the results individually. The firms collaborate on graphs and data charts and release results together, including their separate opinions on the data’s implications.

The latest poll results at press time show Obama at 44 percent, McCain at 42 percent, and 13 percent undecided.

“We have seen movement to and from each candidate every week,” says Nienaber. “Both candidates have a pretty high favorability rating unlike in the 2004 election, so they still have the ability to persuade audiences and gain some ground. We also have noticed that while both candidates have their party’s vote locked up, the middle voters are still choosing between the two.”
Lake says their polling work is very fast-paced.

“It’s definitely crazy during election season, particularly a competitive presidential election,” she says. “But I love hearing how people think about things. I think it’s a real representation of democracy because it’s the common people who have the word.”

The idea for the poll stemmed from an informal 1989 meeting in a piano bar in Hungary. Lake says she and Ed Goeas, president and CEO of The Tarrance Group, met during a business trip to discuss the possibility of creating a poll in which neither side had to compromise.

“We thought it would be great to learn from each other and engage in a dialogue with the public,” says Lake. Both Lake and Nienaber say the Battleground Poll is unique.

“There are other bipartisan polling efforts but none in which analysis is different by party and none in which two people write questions together then write analysis separately,” says Lake. “The GW-Battleground Poll continues to be important because of the uniqueness of its perspective and its lengthy, ongoing database that can look at elections over time.”

“We are partisan firms but we each take time out of our day to come together and collaborate on this poll,” says Nienaber. “It also provides GW students with actual examples of data and shows them that what is learned in the classroom can be applied to real life.”

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