Pre-election polling is a rare chance for pollsters to "check their work" by measuring how well their polls matched election outcomes.

• Identifying likely voters
• Determining voter preference
• Gauging the accuracy of election polls
• Additional topics on election polling

Most of our national surveys of the general public are conducted by telephone using a random digit sample of listed and unlisted telephone numbers in the continental United States.

• Random digit dialing - our standard method
• Cell phones
• Oversamples
• Regional surveys
• International surveys
• Elites and other special populations
• Why probability sampling

Survey researchers employ a variety of techniques in the collection of survey data. In this section, we have chosen the reports and commentaries that best highlight these methods.

• Cell phone surveys
• Internet surveys
• The problem of declining response rates
• Mixed-mode surveys
• Reinterviews

Question design is often thought to represent the art of survey research but there is also plenty of science involved. What are the pitfalls and best practices of survey design?

• Questionnaire development
• Measuring change over time
• Question wording
• Question order
• Order of answer categories
• Pretesting
• Pilot tests and focus groups