Public Policy Polling (PPP) is an American polling firm affiliated with the Democratic Party. Founded in 2001 by businessman Dean Debnam, the firm is based in

Raleigh Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

. Debnam currently serves as president and CEO of PPP, while Tom Jensen serves as the firm's director. During the 2020 US presidential election, PPP predicted that Joe Biden would win the states of Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Iowa, but Donald Trump ultimately won all of those states. FiveThirtyEight nevertheless included PPP in its list of the most accurate pollsters of the 2020 presidential election. In addition to political issues, PPP has conducted polling on comical topics. These include surveys of whether Republican voters believe

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

would be eligible to enter

heaven Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...

in the event of the

Rapture The rapture is an Christian eschatology, eschatological position held by some Christians, particularly those of American evangelicalism, consisting of an Eschatology, end-time event when all Christian believers who are alive, along with resurre ...

, whether hipsters should be subjected to a special tax for being annoying, and whether Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.

Elections

2008

PPP first entered prominence through its performance in the 2008 Democratic primaries between

and

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

. The company performed well, producing accurate predictions in states ranging from South Carolina to Wisconsin, many of which featured inaccurate results by other pollsters. After the November election, PPP was ranked by the ''Wall Street Journal'' as one of the two most accurate firms, among those who were most active in the presidential swing states.

2010

PPP was the first pollster to find Scott Brown with a lead over

Martha Coakley Martha Mary Coakley (born July 14, 1953) is an American lobbyist and lawyer who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County from 1999 to 200 ...

in the Massachusetts Senate special election; Brown ultimately won in a major comeback, and PPP's final poll in that race predicted Brown's winning margin exactly.

2011

PPP was praised for its accuracy in polling

primaries Primary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the c ...

and

special elections A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

, which are notoriously hard to predict. The contests they accurately predicted include the West Virginia gubernatorial primaries, special elections in New York and California, as well as all eight Wisconsin recall elections.

2012

A study by

Fordham University Fordham University () is a private Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx in which its original campus is located, Fordham is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit un ...

found that, of 28 firms studied, PPP had the most accurate poll on the presidential national popular vote, both its independently conducted poll and the one it does in collaboration with the

Daily Kos Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site includes glossaries and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of " netroots" activism. Daily Kos was ...

and the

SEIU Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a labor union representing almost 1.9 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States and Canada. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare (over half of members ...

. PPP correctly called the winner of the presidential election in all 19 states it polled in the final week of the election, as well as the winners of all the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races it surveyed.

2014

Political research firm

YouGov YouGov is a British international Internet-based market research and data analytics firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. In 2007, it acquired US company Polimetrix, and sinc ...

found PPP's gubernatorial polls to have the lowest average margin of error among national firms that polled in at least five gubernatorial races in the month preceding the election.

2016

In the 2016 Presidential Election, PPP's final polls widely missed the mark in several key swing states, including

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. Their polls also significantly underestimated President Trump's lead in

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

, and incorrectly predicted

to win

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

Methodology and reception

The company's surveys use

Interactive Voice Response Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interac ...

(IVR), an automated

questionnaire A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix ...

used by other polling firms such as SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports. The journalist Nate Cohn has criticized the company's methodology as being "unscientific". In 2013 columnist Nate Cohn described PPP as a liberal pollster. Statistician

Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of '' FiveThirtyE ...

stated that PPP had a tendency to slightly lean Democratic by 1% as of January 2022. As of January 2022, Silver's website,

FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', sometimes rendered as ''538'', is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in th ...

, gave PPP a A− grade in its pollster ranking.

References

External links

* {{official, http://www.publicpolicypolling.com Companies based in Raleigh, North Carolina Companies established in 2001 Democratic Party (United States) organizations Privately held companies based in North Carolina Public opinion research companies in the United States