Marist Poll

[transcript]

[Marist College Institute of Public Opinion, Poughkeepsie, New York]

"Hi may name is Steph and I'm calling from Marist College…Do you approve or disapprove of the job Republicans in Congress are doing?...Right now do you think the U.S. economy is getting better, getting worse, or staying about the same?"

"Hi, my name is Mike and I'm calling from Marist College…."

MOST PUBLIC OPINION POLLS ARE ALL ABOUT THE NUMBERS

[Mike Conte, Marist College Student]

"More people do the surveys than I thought would when I first started here."

BUT THE MARIST POLL IS ALSO ABOUT THE STUDENTS

[Courtney Davis, Marist College Student]

"Our saying here is smile while you dial…"

WHO ASK ALL THOSE QUESTIONS

"We're talking to people in your community and collecting opinions…."

THAT MAKE ALL THOSE NUMBERS POSSIBLE.

[Barbara Carvalho, Director, Marist Poll]

"The Marist Poll is a research center first and foremost…

"Do you approve or disapprove…"

"Our goal here is education and our students are always foremost in our minds."

AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO LEARN ABOUT A POTENTIALLY DRY SUBJECT LIKE STATISTICS OR POLITICS THAN THIS:

"I kinda like what I do, I'm in political science and a lot of the surveys I'm interested in so it doesn't really bother me much when people just hang up on you."

STUDENTS AREN'T JUST A HANDY WAY OF STAFFING THE PHONES -- THEY ARE THE REASON THE MARIST INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC OPINION EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[Lee Miringoff, Director, Marist Institute for Public Opinion]
"In 1978 I was teaching a course in voting behavior and it was suggested from the class that we should do a poll and I thought this was a great idea to have students apply the theories of the classroom to the real world of voters."

AND SO THEY DID – STUDENTS WORKED UP AN EXIT POLL FOR A LOCAL COUNTY RACE AND NAILED IT.
THE MARIST POLL WAS BORN.

[WNBC Channel 4 Live at Five Jim Ryan report from 1984]
[Blackboard showing poll with Gary Hart, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson]
"We interviewed 489 Democrats. I'm fond of saying it's a snapshot. It's a measure of where the electorate is at this point in time."

"Back then it was in its infancy. We had rotary phones, students had hard-copy questionnaires, they had answering sheets which looked like multiple choice tests, they had little index cards with the phone numbers on them it was all very, very low tech."

[WNBC Channel 4 Today in New York, Tony Guida, Jane Hanson 1992]
[Black and white photo on steps of New York City Hall with Gabe Pressman]
BEFORE LONG MARIST WAS POLLING BIG RACES AND IN THE PROCESS THIS UPSTART OPERATION WAS IN THE BIG LEAGUES – NATIONALLY-KNOWN FOR ITS ACCURACY.

[MSNBC Brian Williams 2004]
Traditionally do they hold up or are is this people just casting about for an anybody but Bush movement?
Well I think what we're seeing in these numbers.

THE REASON IS THE MARIST POLL IS THE REAL DEAL – THE SURVEYS ARE CONCEIVED AND CONDUCTED USING THE BEST SCIENCE – AND IT ALL BEGINS WITH THE QUESTIONS.

[Sue Kenney McCulloch, Senior Research Associate, Marist Poll]
"We really make sure the questions are getting at what we really want to know and making sure that the questions are answering what we're intending them to answer."

"Overall would you describe the direction that President Barack Obama is moving the country as, change for the better, change for the worse, or no change at all.

"It may seem easy to just write a question that everybody understands the right way and they interpret the right way and that all the interviewers can administer in the same way but in fact it's difficult."

THEN IT'S UP TO THE STUDENTS.

[Alicia Buhse, Survey Operations Manager, Marist Poll]
"We basically want the same results from every interviewer. If one interviewer calls someone at 530 in the afternoon we expect that they're getting the same results from that person that if a completely different interviewer called them."

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the economy?"

"We provide them all that they need to know to be a really good interviewer."

OF COURSE EVEN THEN NOT EVERYONE ON THE OTHER END OF THE LINE NECESSARILY WANTS TO TALK BUT STUDENTS LEARN WHAT TO SAY TO TRY AND CONVINCE RELUCTANT RESONDENTS OTHERWISE.
WHEN THAT DOESN'T WORK IT'S STILL THE KIND OF REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE STUDENTS CAN USE WHEN THEY GRADUATE.

SOT/31730/DAVIS
"I would get really upset when people would hang up but I started to get a tougher skin as time went on."

NOT ALL THE POLLING MARIST DOES IS FOR POLITICAL RACES.

"There are actually two separate sides to the Marist Poll -- the public side which we're well known for -- but also there's a private side where we do polling for private companies and not-for-profit organizations."

IN THESE CASES THE QUESTIONS ARE ABOUT COMMUNITIES, NEEDS, AND PRIORITIES.
AND THE MARIST POLL IS BRANCHING OUT ONLINE TOO – WITH A WEBSITE THAT IS ALSO ABOUT MORE THAN JUST THE NUMBERS.

[Mary Azzoli, Director, Interactive Media Services, Marist Poll]
"We have not only our poll releases but we have expert commentary. We have places where people can come to the site and comment on our polls, they can also comment on blogs that have been written there. We have audio and video snippets there that can put those numbers into context."

BUT THE FOUNDATION OF THE MARIST POLL REMAINS: SCIENCE AND STUDENTS.

"I've always used the model that if this was something that I wanted to do or I would have liked to have done as an undergraduate then let's find a way as a faculty member in political science to have this an opportunity for the students to further their education. And that's what we've been doing, the same model, thirty-plus years."