What does the public really think about President George W. Bush's campaign ads or the Democrats' comparison of Bush to Herbert Hoover?
The National Annenberg Election Survey answers these kinds of questions regarding the 2004 presidential election with well-regarded and influential data.
The group releases daily surveys that offer insight into the attitudes of the general public about important election issues, often referenced by a wide variety of media outlets such as the Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press, as well as television stations and magazines.
Just last week, the survey discovered that less than half of the public could name Hoover as a former president or associate him with the Great Depression.
The survey also showed that there is a significant amount of criticism from undecided voters about the "inappropriate" use of 9/11 images in Bush's ads.
"We're probably the most cited public opinion poll in the media right now," NAES Political Director Adam Clymer says, noting that the survey is one of the only polls that does not have media affiliations, unlike polls by newspapers like The New York Times.
The NAES began on Oct. 7, 2003, at the start of the presidential election season and continuously polls a large number of Americans about their views, continuing past the presidential election in November.
Clymer says the large size of the survey allows the results to be respected by the media and to be a fair representation of the public's opinions.
Minorities are often excluded from other polls, but the NAES provides a voice to groups that make up less than 1 percent of the general population, like Native Americans.
The survey can quickly poll the public "depending on what's going on in the campaign," turning out results that are always relevant, Clymer says.
For example, the day Bush announced his support for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, the survey released polls showing that although much of the public is against gay marriage, more Americans oppose an amendment than support it.
"We look at every poll," Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania Political Director Josh Wilson says, adding that the committee does not exclusively use one type of poll over another.
Wilson notes that these types of polls help political groups gauge public opinion of important election issues, although he admits that "there are nuances to every one ... specific to the type of poll they're conducting."
As a result, the committee considers the polls as a group in order to best evaluate certain issues.
"A lot of the polls come somewhat close to each other," Wilson says. "We like to look at it from a party perspective."
A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the NAES develops survey questions in a variety of ways, including referencing personal experiences from the team members who guide the survey.
Clymer himself developed the idea for one survey that asked Democrats if they were still bitter about the 2000 election.
"I heard out on the campaign trail" that Democrats were still angry, Clymer says, so he decided to turn this observation into a poll.
The survey found that 69 percent of Democrats say Al Gore really won the 2000 election.
Much of the funding for the survey comes from the Policy Center and from grants, allowing NAES to hire the research company Schulman, Ronca, Bucuvalas Inc. to conduct the large number of interviews.
The firm has call centers in Florida and New Jersey and uses randomly selected phone numbers from across the country to contact potential interviewees.
