campaign desk

Revisiting the New Hampshire Polls

Trade group readies a panel
January 14, 2008

The American Association for Public Opinion Research, a trade association of pollsters, announced today that it will convene an ad-hoc panel to look into the New Hampshire polling meltdown.

In a statement, Nancy Mathiowetz, the group’s president, equates last week’s failure with 1948’s Truman-Dewey bust. After that historic misreading, the Social Science Research Council convened a panel, which Mathiowetz says “played a key role in restoring public confidence and improving research methodology.” This time around, the goal seems much the same.

Details on the upcoming panel are scant at the moment, but the association promises to review individual pollsters’ in-house investigations and to preserve pre-New Hampshire polling data for future research. Expect more information after the group’s executive council meets this weekend.

Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.