Massive consumer and voter databases that did not exist 25 years ago now provide detailed information (income, home value, etc.) on most people, allowing pollsters to draw a randomly selected target sample from a voter list and then match closely-similar respondents from a large opt-in internet panel, creating a sample that mimics a random sample across many dimensions and removes skews that simple demographic weighting cannot.

causalpending

Speaker

Doug Rivers

Evidence Quote

since the group is so large and diverse I can find close matches to the people who I selected off of the voter list in terms of a large set of characteristics... and so that creates a sample that mimics the random sample

Source

Doug Rivers on polling 7/21/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:54 AM

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