New polling methods are being formulated and tested, but they don’t seem likely to be ready for prime-time deployment in 2020. | Michael Conroy/AP Photo politics Pollsters rush to patch fraying methods for Trump's reelection race Professional pollsters say the old way of conducting surveys is fading fast, but new methods might not be trusted and ready for next year.

TORONTO — When veteran pollster Scott Keeter appeared at a recent gathering of industry professionals, he began his presentation with a somber caveat about the methods at the center of his life’s work.

Telephone polling — for decades the backbone of efforts to measure public opinion and the subject of his new study — are in “wheezing condition,” Keeter told a roomful of colleagues. And experiments to prolong their use are akin to putting on “a great party for the deck of the Titanic.”


The impending death of the telephone poll comes just as the 2020 presidential election is approaching — and without enough time for a tested and trusted alternative to replace it. That raises serious concerns about the reliability of polling results heading into the election, other survey researchers told POLITICO on the sidelines of their conference, with scrutiny of the industry set to be heavier than ever after President Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016.

Fewer Americans than ever are willing to pick up the phone and talk to pollsters, sending costs skyrocketing to roughly double what they were four years ago. Despite enjoying a largely successful 2018 election, pollsters are furiously experimenting to fill the void left by the slow failure of the telephone poll, looking at everything from internet-based solutions to snail mail.

But the possibility of another polling miss in the 2020 presidential race looms, and the next election could present new, unforeseen challenges that polls may struggle to address as they test new methodologies under exacting scrutiny. Both parties are framing the race as an existential contest over the country's future. Voter engagement is at record highs for this stage of the election cycle. And pollsters are already facing blame for recent election surprises in Israel and Australia.

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Steve Koczela, who conducts phone polls in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for Boston’s NPR affiliate, described 2020 as a year “full of promise and peril” as the polling industry transitions from phones to something else.

“It doesn’t seem live phone polling is going away anytime soon, but its place as the clear gold standard is a thing of the past,” Koczela said.

But, for now, most of those other methods are still in development, pollsters at the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s annual meeting said.

Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in New Jersey, is releasing phone surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire — while, at the same time, conducting as-yet-unreleased experiments with web surveys in which he sends invitations over email. And he says he isn’t alone in testing new methods.

“What I was really surprised at [the conference] this year are the number of traditional pollsters like myself who have, independently of one another, been starting to dip our toes in that pool,” Murray said. “So, right now, while I’m releasing my telephone polls in the early states, I’m also simultaneously conducting online polls using a list sample where I can validate the voters using an email address. And I’m looking to see how that holds up against the telephone survey.”

The eventual replacement for phone polling may not be any one method. It’s more likely to be a patchwork of solutions trying to keep up with the rapidly changing ways Americans communicate with one another. Pollsters at the conference presented research on sending voters invitations in the mail to participate in a web survey and texting voters with links to online polls. Another study even had live interviewers texting back and forth with respondents — a 21st century twist on the telephone conversations long underpinning survey research.

But none of the methods seem ready for prime-time deployment — or the widespread trust of pollsters, campaigns and media organizations — between now and 2020. U.S. news outlets and academic institutions are doing a lot of testing, but the polls governing the presidential race thus far don’t reflect that experimentation. Of the 18 polls conducted so far this year that the Democratic National Committee is counting for qualifying for the first two presidential primary debates, all but one of them are telephone polls conducted by live interviewers.

Many of these innovations are actually coming from the private campaign world. A pollster with the Democratic firm Global Strategy Group presented research his firm had done on reaching voters via text message and directing them to a web survey about ballot measures in Nevada. The all-text-message interview poll study was also from a Democratic firm, Survey 160.

That means the gap between the public polls of the 2020 presidential race and those conducted privately by political groups and campaigns could be significantly greater than in past elections. Virtually all private election polls are conducted by calling people from lists of registered voters, but a number of public polls — including most national surveys — still involve randomly dialing phone numbers.

So far, the spirit of innovation in campaign polls appear to be coming more from Democrats. “I don’t think that quite exists on the Republican side yet,” said Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, who attended the conference.

Neither party is giving up traditional phone surveys entirely for 2020, though the cash crunch remains a major factor for campaigns — and the media — in deciding where and how frequently to poll, in what candidates and their supporters are calling the most important election in years.

“Our fear is that, if you don’t solve this, it’s going to mean fewer surveys — both on the public side and on the campaign side,” Ruffini said. “It’s not like people are not going to do it — they’re just going to do it less. There’s going to be less situational awareness. I think that’s the urgent problem that needs to be solved.”

The problems surrounding telephone polling and response rates aren't new, but the urgency around them is.

“I think this year is the year that it’s become inevitable,” said Murray. “We’ve been building towards it, and I think anybody who’s being realistic right now realizes that we now see the horizon for using telephones for election polling.”