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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Joe King, Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-4299

Oct. 1, 2004

NIU student pollsters look to gauge pre-election mood

DE KALB -- Northern Illinois University Professor Barbara Burrell is hoping DeKalb County residents will take five minutes to help her students better understand the political process.

 

That is about how long, she estimates, it will take to participate in a telephone survey that will be designed, administered and analyzed by NIU political science students taking Public Opinion Polls 304. The survey, which will be conducted Oct. 5-11, will focus on who voters are favoring in the November presidential and senate races.

 

The class hopes to complete 500-600 interviews during that span. Doing so should provide them with a snapshot of voter mood that is accurate to within 4 or 5 percentage points of being able to generalize to the population of voters in DeKalb County, said Burrell who is associate director of NIU’s Public Opinion Laboratory.

 

“This is a wonderful opportunity to expose students to a real world polling situation and to give them a chance to hear how people express their opinions,” said Burrell who has had classes conduct similar polls during the general elections of 2000 and 2002.

 

“It’s a very useful exercise,” says Burrell. “When we think of public opinion today it is mostly in terms of the results of polls, so I want students to see first-hand how polls are done and to understand the characteristics of a good poll.”

 

When polling would-be voters, the students will ask respondents who they will vote for (and why). They will also ask a series of questions designed to gauge ideological leanings. Those questions may touch on issues such as viewpoints on gay marriage, the war in Iraq, trade restrictions and others. The information gathered will be kept confidential, but when taken in aggregate will help students paint a picture of the local electorate that they can analyze across any number of variables.

 

“One of our goals will be to analyze that data to learn how polarized the electorate has become,” says Burrell who hopes to release results of the poll by mid-October.

 

In the past, student polls conducted through the class have had an uneven track record of predicting how DeKalb County will vote. Burrell is hoping the results this time will more closely mirror actual results because only registered voters will be polled, whereas no such restrictions were imposed in the past.

 

“I really encourage people to take five minutes to answer the questions if they are called,” she said. “Not only will they be helping the students get a grade, but they will also help them to better understand politics.”

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