Survey & Data Collection
If you haven’t thought positively towards this direction, allow us to break it down for you: politics is one of the biggest marketing gimmick. Businesses, for once, might not rely on data for making its next move, however the politics is nearly resistant to making blank decisions.
From election fever to understanding voter base; and from launching a political campaign to arriving at the right manifestos; Online political surveys are needed by political consultants, political parties, political action committees, and sometimes government agencies also to cater to the influential mass hysteria.
Media organizations too fancy their share of instant polls on hot-button problems. There are a plenty of sides to political surveys, that we cover during this process. thus let’s start.
What is Political Survey?
“A political survey records voters’ attitudes, opinions, moods, partisanship, and personal information. The data is then used to launch political campaigns to garner maximum support from across the spectrum.
“Generally, political parties hire research and survey companies to set themselves up in the best winning position.”
Why are political surveys conducted?
We want to cover the most with why political surveys are conducted and how they help in elections. Well, don’t be surprised because there are plenty of use cases in political surveys. Let’s jump into it quickly:
1.Identifying Supporters:
You set up a questionnaire to identify people who support your manifesto.
Get feedback on your current work, learn who supports your cause and who are the ones spreading misinformation. And Then fine-tune your marketing techniques for effective pitching. Also, adapt political pitching to potential supporters who can speak on your behalf.
The gist is this: you’re looking for the ideal sample population that will best serve your political objective.
2.Bringing Change at the Ground Level:
You cannot solve any problem unless you start the reforms from the ground level. Identifying problems in constituencies or at the local level and coming up with ideal solutions should make you appear home in the polls.
Insightful data on aspects such as related problems in the locality, the best officers to solve these problems, and feedback on existing infrastructure, health, economy and employment should help you make important data-backed decisions.
You are basically starting your campaign on a nuclear level and then taking it to a more massive level. Political questionnaires is the way you go about it.
3.Organizing Political Rallies:
Political rallies are the biggest expense of elections. So it is clear that you are not burdened with mindless green bills on events that do not matter to you and the audience. Political surveys can help in assessing the response and success of entire episode at its any phase.
You thoughtfully plan events, select the best delegates and volunteers, send invitations to supporters, collect data, and prepare for subsequent rallies based on feedback.
You’re using political survey questionnaires from organizing a rally to reading metrics and numbers to preparing for the next rally. And you are also collecting the feedback of the donors who contribute money towards your cause.
4.For Personal Polls:
Although you have plenty of online and media-sponsored polls, you really can’t trust centralized news sources.
Want to find out the most accurate data for yourself? Maybe just for your awareness? Curious to know:
Who the guy in the neighbourhood supports?
Where is your teacher politically inclined?
What is his opinion on serious matters like unemployment or inflation, health security or traffic and national security? You can find out what everyone in your circle says.
To put this into perspective, you can launch as many polls as you want in your social circle to break down ideologies and political circles and engage in meaningful conversations with people of all values
5.Post-event feedback:
Unless you know the response to the event, be it rallies or fundraising, you cannot work on other event projects. Political surveys break down the data on high/low attendance volume and let you fine-tune the problem for the following phases of the election.
You can also find details on whether rallies and events add value and benefit to the audience. It’s like… getting feedback on the whole event, so you can craft the next election pitching more strongly.
You also learn more about whether touching on specific topics and areas elicits great responses and then builds on those same topics more strongly in the next presentation.
6.Any Election You Can Think Of:
Any election you think of, be it member of parliament elections or member of legislative assembly elections, panchayat elections or municipal elections, political surveys streamline the election process and make it smooth, efficient and quick.
7.Research on Political Science:
You want to research political science on how the population feels about media coverage and if they have examples of unbiased reporting.
Finding gaps and continuities in political coverage should help in creating political content. Learn more about how the media influences opinion during an election year and develop targeted content to engage your potential voter base.
Know the uproar happening on any political issue and give your opinion accordingly.
8.Reactions to Speeches and Debates:
Why should you wait for political pundits to know the reaction of audience on speeches and debates? They certainly stir up a lot of controversy, and you can’t wait to see who feels what!
You also want to know who picks the sides in your circle. Embed the online questionnaire with Facebook and other social media and learn more about party affiliation. Have a conversation with those you disagree with and reach a common point of conversation!
9.Segmentation of the audience:
As polarizing as it may sound, political parties use online and offline survey tools for political surveys to understand the set of beliefs and ideologies of particular demographics and curate content that fits their narrative.
Segment your audience into distinct groups and launch campaigns that target these groups for long-term commitment to your organization.
What are the methods of political survey?
Although online surveys rule the roost of political surveys, you can use other survey methods to increase the overall response rate:
1. Online Survey:
Of course, these surveys are just the latest way to crack supporters.They are one of the most cost-effective methods of collecting data, and this can be explained by their widespread use compared to other data collection methods.
Political surveys with online surveys: Political researchers prefer this survey method when they have many questions to ask a large size of target population. For example, something as major as the presidential election.
Response rate: The response rate depends on the survey campaign and call to action you use. Rates can range from as low as 2% in external surveys to as high as 85% in well-delivered and optimized survey campaigns. But the average response rate for online surveys is around 29%.
2. Face-to-Face Survey:
Most political campaigning and candidate promotion come with face-to-face surveys. These surveys have existed for ages and continue to dominate surveys regarding effective response rates.
Political campaigners and pollsters also use psychological methods to maximize the benefits of face-to-face surveys.
For example, researchers are pre-trained with psychological tricks to make these political surveys more intuitive, accurate and customizable at response time.
Political survey with face-to-face survey: Political researchers use this survey to reduce the face-to-face validity of the response. They detect voters’ social cues, body language and visual aids.
Response Rate: The response rate for face to face surveys is approximately 57%. This is huge when compared to telephonic and paper surveys. The reason is clear: People don’t turn away political pollsters at the door.
3. Online Survey:
You can say that telephonic surveys add some of the same human factor as paper and face-to-face surveys.
But the real rub is this: It takes far less time and investment than the other two.
Researchers and field surveyors are trained to develop a friendly equation with the attendees to avoid missing essential data. But this does not always allow establishing social ties as in the first survey generations.
Political Survey with Telephonic Mode: Political researchers and campaigners use telephone survey to know what their people think about their manifesto and work in previous years. They also identify voter behavior in pre- and post-voting cycles.
Response rates: No surprise, telephonic response rates have declined significantly over the past two decades. This is about 18 to 20%, which is missed on a large population sample and skews the data.
4.Paper Survey:
This is your own traditional method for collecting political data, the pen and paper data collection method. You want these surveys in areas with a lack of internet connectivity and equipment. Although an older method, it is still a popular choice in less developed demography for political field research.
Political Survey with Paper Mode: Political researchers use paper surveys for difficult documents in field and sample research. And we shouldn’t ban paper surveys altogether.
Response rate: Since trusted government officials conduct most surveys, you can expect a reasonable survey response rate with this one.
Ready to get started with Political Survey Tools?
If you think that you have to spend a lot of money to know the mood of your voters, as well as have different methods of surveying to meet your political goals, then you are wrong!There are more manageable, intelligent and cost-effective ways to deal with such complex political campaigns. We call it the Pollstics App.
It is a mix of offline + online survey method to deploy and collect data with or without internet. So you’re already getting rid of multiple methods with the one-size-fits-all Pollstics App.