What part of a college or university runs political polling?

Factual Questions
1

On Nate Silver’s site (Pollster Ratings | FiveThirtyEight) there’s a rating of the various pollsters. The list is comprised of maybe 250 or more polling organizations. Of these, roughly 82 are associated with a college or university. Are these polls run through a department, e.g. mathematics, political science, etc.? Or is there a research arm of the school that seeks to find these data? Why are colleges and universities in the polling business?

2

Yes. A department is a “research arm of the school”.

3

Why do scientists run experiments in their labs? To get information.

Polls (surveys, etc. - we normally use polls to refer only to political questions, but the larger issue of asking questions to random populations has the same logic) are a known way of gathering information on large populations. They sure beat getting the students in your class to answer a questionnaire. Polls are critical to huge numbers of departments - political science, history, economics, sociology, pretty much any of the social sciences. A huge limitation of polling is that polls are expensive, too much so for individual professors to fund on their own. Having a university’s resources to dip into is crucial (as is getting cheap or unpaid labor from graduate students; I did work study at what now appears to be named the Scripps Survey Research Center.) I’m not at all surprised that major major* research universities have a center that does this.

*Run by Major Major Major Major. I meant “many major”

4

They run one of those those university polling organizations down the hall from me.

It’s a separate organization, not part of any of the academic departments.

Why do we run polls? Because many of the polls are commissioned (not the ones you’d see on fivethirtyeight.com). The SRI and other polling institutes are profitable. The political polls are not, but they’re a way to put your name out there to attract customers. We could point out our grade on 538 is A+ as a selling point for new customers.

It has little to do with college research, though I suppose it could be used for it if the college wants.

5

Yeah. Of course, that wasn’t my question.

Such as Rhode Island College, Hendrix College, Manhattanville College, Lycoming College, and etc.?

Thanks, Reality Chuck

6

Quinnipiac University (formerly Quinnipiac College) near where I grew up in Connecticut has a large polling unit that is frequently mentioned in national news stories. For that reason, I think the polling unit helps the school by getting its name out there. (I don’t know if that’s the big reason they do it, but it seems a clever way to market the school.)

7
  1. That many major colleges do doesn’t imply that every major college does.
  2. That some major colleges do doesn’t imply that every one which does is a major college.
  3. That there is a listing of colleges on 538 doesn’t imply that it is exhaustive; some colleges may not make their findings public in a way that it can use.
  4. That some college research centers are separate organizations doesn’t imply that all are.
  5. That some college research centers are profit-seeking doesn’t imply that all are.
  6. That you haven’t heard of a college doesn’t imply anything about its status in its field.
8

There are no rules to prevent a prof in any department from going into the polling business if they have the time/money. There have been people in fields like Mathematics or Computer Science that do meta-polling (collecting other people’s data and doing their own analysis).

So, technically a poll could be done by someone in the Medieval Literature Department.

But, yeah, it’s frequently PoliSci or a “think thank” type organization affiliated with the school. Especially with the later it’s very important to know who is funding it. Some are funded heavily by groups with a particular political bent and the polls produced frequently reflect this.