The New York Times rocked the polling world over the weekend. Here’s why. – The Washington Post

The New York Times made a big decision over the weekend. It unveiled a collaboration with an Internet polling company and unveiled the results of its first survey from that collaboration. I reached out to David Leonhardt, the editor of The Upshot, the Times’ data and visual storytelling site, in hope of getting answers to a few questions about how that decision was made — and why. He graciously obliged.  Our exchange, conducted via email, is below. It has been edited only for grammar.

FIX: The Times shook up the polling world this weekend when the Upshot decided to start including Internet polling — conducted by YouGov — in your election models.  Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at Pew, called the decision “a very big deal in the survey world.” How much time did you guys spend thinking about including Internet polling and what tipped the scale for you?

Leonhardt: As a long time Fix fan, I’m excited to be doing this, Chris. And I like this question, because it lets me explain what’s different about this project and what’s not different.

Let’s start with what’s not different. The Times has long included Internet polling in our election models, as do other well-known models. Our Upshot Senate model has included online polls since we launched it in April, and the FiveThirtyEight model included online polls when it was at The Times (as it presumably will in the future).

As you know, the world of polling is changing. Telephone polls based on random-number dialing – which have long been the gold standard and remain vital to any model – are coping with declining response rates. In 1997, telephone polls had a response rate of 36 percent, according to Pew. By 2012, the rate had fallen to 9 percent.

Online surveys, even the very best, have their own limitations, of course. Only 89 percent of Americans are on the Internet, Pew says. And unlike telephone polls, online surveys can’t randomly select people, because you can’t randomize email addresses the way you can randomize phone numbers. That’s a big drawback.

But here’s the good news: The best phone polls and the best online surveys have different challenges. Phone polls tend to have low response rates among younger people. (How often do you think 25-year-olds answer calls on their mobile phone from numbers starting with 888?) Older people are less likely to be online.

via The New York Times rocked the polling world over the weekend. Here’s why. – The Washington Post.