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Emerson College Polling
| Emerson College Polling | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Location: | Boston, Mass. |
| Type: | Polling firm |
| Top official: | Spencer Kimball, Executive Director |
| Website: | Official website |
Emerson College Polling is a polling firm associated with Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to presidential election polls, the firm has produced congressional, gubernatorial, and senatorial polls in 20 states.[1]
Background
Emerson College Polling formed from an expansion of the college's polling program developed in the 1990s. Spencer Kimball, an assistant professor of communications, began advising the student-run Emerson College Polling Society in 2012. Kimball grew the organization's coverage area and use of interactive voice response polling.[2]
Emerson College Polling is also a charter member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research Transparency Initiative.[1]
Leadership
As of August 2025, Spencer Kimball was the executive director of Emerson College Polling.[3]
Work and activities
Polling
Emerson uses both landline respondents and online panels in its samples. Through screening questions, the organization focuses on likely voters. It uses both univariate and bivariate analysis of the polling data. In 2016, Emerson used a landline-only sample design.[1]
2020
Emerson Polling released battleground state polls in Arizona, North Carolina, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.[1]
FiveThirtyEight ranked Emerson College as the fourth-best pollster of the 2020 presidential primaries based on the average error of polls in the final 21 days of the election.[4] According to an analysis of 165 polls, FiveThirtyEight also gave Emerson an overall grade of A- on May 19, 2020.[5]
2018
Emerson conducted 54 polls in 20 states across a variety of congressional, gubernatorial, and Senate races. It correctly predicted Jacky Rosen's (D) victory in the U.S. Senate race in Nevada over an incumbent and Sen. Ted Cruz's (R) margin-of-victory in the U.S. Senate race in Texas. Emerson also said it was the only poll in 2018 that predicted Kim Reynolds (R) would win the gubernatorial election in Iowa.[1]
Finances
As of August 2025, financial data for Emerson College Polling was not available. If you have information to share, click here.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Emerson Polling, "Home," accessed August 6, 2025
- ↑ Emerson College, "Politically Correct," accessed August 6, 2025
- ↑ Emerson College Polling, "About," accessed August 6, 2025
- ↑ FiveThirtyEight, "We’ve Updated Our Pollster Ratings Ahead Of The 2020 General Election," May 19, 2020
- ↑ FiveThirtyEight, "FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings," May 19, 2020
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