Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The history of survey research is inseparably entwined with the development of election polling. As early as 1904, social scientists completed the first quantitative study focusing on the constituency of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. The breakthrough of the representative survey method in the year 1936 was brought about by the spectacularly successful election forecasts published by researchers George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Archibald Crossley prior to the US presidential elections of that same year (→ Election Surveys ). From the start, election forecasts contributed significantly to both public acceptance of modern survey research and new methodological advances, since they offered researchers the rare opportunity to prove the efficacy of the representative survey method (→ Survey ). Over the course of the past few decades, the methodological approaches employed in election polling have diverged strongly (→ Public Opinion Polling ). Today, election forecasts are based on face-to-face surveys, or on telephone surveys or, most recently, on online surveys. In this regard, we must fundamentally distinguish between exit polls – in other words, post-election surveys conducted among voters immediately upon leaving the polling station – and election surveys that are completed prior to an election and that, as a rule, employ the same interviewing methods as are used in representative ... log in or subscribe to read full text