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Media-Driven Instant Polling in the 2012 General Election: Who Won the First Presidential Debate?. Sarah Dutton, Director of Surveys CBS News March 2013. What Viewers Saw at 10:54:33 P.M. CBS News and GfK/Knowledge Panel Partnership. Representative online sample
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Media-Driven Instant Polling in the 2012 General Election: Who Won the First Presidential Debate? Sarah Dutton, Director of Surveys CBS News March 2013
CBS News and GfK/Knowledge Panel Partnership • Representative online sample • Working together since 2000 • Instant reaction polls after debates, Stateof the Union speeches • An expected part of CBS coverage • Provides a competitive edge • Claim to fame: HBO movie “Game Change”
For the 2012 Election • 4 instant polls conducted in 19 days: • all 3 presidential debates • 1 vice presidential debate • Among voters who are uncommitted • N = around 500 • Results delivered on website, phone backup • Need to accurately represent debate watchers
Pre-Debate Poll Recruit participants for post-debate poll • Agree to watch debate • Log in as soon as debate ends • Offered points as incentive • Representative sample of debate watchers • Collect data to establish pre-debate benchmarks for editorial use • Demographics of debate watchers, allows us to check for response bias in post debate poll
When the Debate Ends… • Open up lines, respondents log in • Post-debate survey about 8-10 questions • Pre- and Post-debate data is processed and posted on web site • CBS, GfK check for potential response bias by party, prepared to weight to party ID if necessary (it has not been)
Behind the Scenes….Craziness! • At CBS, talk with producer and correspondent based on partial data • Decide what questions to use on air • Intermittent data dumps • “Will it be ready, will it be ready, will it be ready?” • Stop taking in interviews when we have at least 500 • Final data is inserted into pre-made graphics
Entire Process: Less than 30 Minutes • 9:00 – 10:30 First debate • 10:35 129 interviews in system, 335 in progress • 10:40 494 interviews in system, 98 in progress • 10:45 570 interviews • HALT at n = 500 • 10:54 Anthony Mason on the air 10.6 million viewers
Party Identification for Recruits and Debate Watchers Similar Recruits Watchers Republican 18% 18% Democrat 23 22 Independent/other 59 61 Male 45% 44.5% Female 55 55 White non-Hispanic 71% 71% Hispanic 13 14 Black non-Hispanic 9 7
Other Demographics Recruits Watchers Married 59% 64% 18-29 15% 10% 30-44 30 31 45-64 39 40 65+ 16 19