San Francisco Chronicle: Smartphones revolutionizing political polling

Smartphones revolutionizing political polling

By Carla Marinucci
7/24/13

Claudia Gibson remembers when pollsters from the Field Poll called her on a landline - "dumb phones," she calls them - to ask her views on political campaigns and elections.
 
Today, Gibson, 67, has an iPhone and she's still giving her opinions.

She's part of a revolution in public opinion research - one of 300,000 Americans and 36,000 Californians who are regularly tapped on their smartphones. Gibson gives her views on everything from "What kinds of foods I eat" to "Where do I shop" to "Do I drink beer?" she said.
 
A family law court supervisor who lives in Marin and works in San Francisco, Gibson signed up for an app called Surveys on the Go, which pays respondents from a few cents to as much as $30 for taking part in marketing and political research.
 
"I'm always blunt," she said Tuesday. "It's interesting to see what are the trends people are talking about ... and I feel my opinion matters."
 
Smartphones, which have revolutionized the way Americans of all ages communicate, listen to music and shop, are taking an increasingly important role in political research, helping to track voters' views on issues, ads and candidates.

Immediate feedback
Veteran GOP Sacramento consultant Rick Claussen, who has been involved in dozens of ballot issues and political campaigns, said measuring public opinion has traditionally been time consuming because it involves speaking directly to people - by landlines at their homes or by convening focus groups.

Claussen is among the political consultants and strategists relying on new technology such as Surveys on the Go, which allows him to use mobile-phone research that harnesses GPS and to get immediate feedback from targeted voter groups.
 
Shortened time frame 
"We can do things in 24 hours that used to take a week," said Claussen, who has used mobile-phone research to track Californians' responses to political messaging in ads and campaigns. "It's revolutionary stuff."
 
With the Surveys on the Go app, consumers with mobile technology and smartphones volunteer to take part in public opinion research on topics that interest them - but only when they want.
 
The firm pays for the opinions, promising that on average, the surveys will pay $1 to a participant and take a few minutes - with respondents paid via PayPal once their account has reached $10.
 
Chris St. Hilaire, a former political director to an Assembly minority leader and president and CEO of MFour Mobile Research, an Orange County firm that introduced the surveying app, said "the template for running a political campaign has dramatically changed over the last 10 years."
 
St. Hilaire said the tens of thousands of Californians who, like Gibson, have signed up for Surveys on the Go are part of a growing army that allows pollsters and researchers to "survey by state, by city, by block, by house, by doorstep."
 
Thanks to GPS tracking, St. Hilaire said, "I can ask you when you've walked by a billboard and what you liked and didn't like about it."
 
Mark DiCamillo, director of Field Research in San Francisco and producer of the nonpartisan Field Poll that has measured California public opinion since 1947, reaches voters on both landlines and mobile phones.
 
He said the new wave of mobile research is intriguing and promises "great innovation" in targeting specific populations. But to date, he cautions, such technology is "not broad enough" by itself to provide a random sample and to produce a reliable snapshot of public opinion in election and political research.
 
That's especially true in California, with its diverse electorate of 18 million voters, he said.

The future is mobile
Still, the work done by St. Hilaire's firm has won fans from political operatives and business people.

"Technology is completely defining how we measure public opinion," said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable who also used St. Hilaire's firm when he was political director of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Lapsley said that the technology allowed him to do a "cutting-edge" survey series of public views on ballot issues last year and that the accuracy of the studies convinced him that the future for policy research will very soon rest with mobile research.

Increasingly, "landlines are dead" in consumer research, Lapsley said, adding that he is convinced that for political polling, "this is the way it will be done - all of it - in the next few years."

Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin of San Francisco, who has worked with St. Hilaire's firm on traditional political polling, said "the coolest thing about their technology is doing real-time testing of consumer stuff ... and ad testing."

Under old methods, "you used to have to grab (consumers) and get them to fill out a questionnaire," such as in a shopping mall, he said. But with GPS trackers, researchers can know when "you go into a Gap, and they can hit you with a survey" to gauge immediate reaction.

Tulchin acknowledges that traditional methods of political polling remain "the gold standard." But with mobile phones in the hands of millions of Americans, "this is the future of our industry," he said. "And the future is probably closer than many of us think."

View story online here.

Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer.
E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com
Twitter: @cmarinucci

Going Mobile? "Optimized" is Not a Solution!

In May I was at the Orlando MRA conference where I listened intently to a large panel company representative explaining why they got into mobile.  The answer was that "we had to...because 25% of the responses were coming in via mobile anyway."

As tepid as that response was, one thing was clear...the need to be "mobile" is finally dawning upon panel providers and so they all claim to have a mobile solution.  But what is their "solution?"  To "optimize" website-based surveys for smartphones and tablets. 

The fact is mobile-web based "optimized" solutions merely squeeze a platform built for desktop computers onto a mobile device - benefiting the survey platform provider, not the on-the-go consumer.  And that is not a good way to start your data collection.

Mobile "optimized" solutions rely on fleeting Wi-Fi connections and notoriously overburdened cell phone carriers, leaving the respondent with a frustratingly slow and inconsistent survey experience.

If researchers truly want to interview the modern consumer, they must do so using tools that work for on-the-go consumer, meaning native smartphone applications.  The respondent can focus on the survey questions and answers; push notification invitations that gain immediate attention; and a custom questionnaire layout that fits the uniqueness of their device.

Let's compare the statistics regarding panelist engagement between online "optimized" and a native app solution:

 






In fact, the completion rate for native app respondents is 98% - meaning 98 out of every 100 respondents complete the survey once they start.  This stat holds with survey lengths of up to 15 minutes.

When you put the two methods side-by-side it becomes clear - a native app offers a faster, more robust experience for respondents, leading to more representative completes and quality data.  In addition, the native app unlocks the power of the smartphone to bring researchers the ability to show and capture audio, video, images, as well as scan barcodes, and harness the power of GPS technology.

We are a mobile only, app based solution...and with more than 300,000 active respondents with their GPS "on", we can field surveys better, faster and more efficiently.

For more of an in-depth look at the app solution, visit us at mfour.com.