Siena College Research Institute
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Siena College Research Institute (SCRI) is an affiliate of
Siena College Siena College is a Private college, private Franciscan college in Loudonville, New York, United States. It was founded by the Order of Friars Minor in 1937 and is named after the Franciscan friar Bernardino of Siena. The college enrolls approxi ...
, located originally in Friars Hall and now in Hines Hall on the college's campus, in Loudonville, New York, in suburban Albany. It was founded in 1980. Statistics and finance professor Doug Lonnstrom was its founding director. Donald P. Levy is its current director. It conducts both expert and public opinion polls, focusing on New York State and the United States, on issues of
public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a Group decision-making, decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to Problem solving, solve or address relevant and problematic social issues, guided by a conceptio ...
interest. They include education, health care, and
consumer confidence Consumer confidence is an economic indicator that measures the degree of optimism that consumers feel about the overall state of the economy and their personal financial situation. If the consumer has confidence in the immediate and near future ...
, and explores business, economic, political, voter, social, educational, and historical issues. SCRI conducted surveys on New Yorkers' sentiments towards the creation of the Cordoba House Mosque near the
World Trade Center site The World Trade Center site, often referred to as " Ground Zero" or "the Pile" immediately after the September 11 attacks, is a 14.6-acre (5.9 ha) area in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north ...
in
lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York City, is the southernmost part of the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is History of New York City, the historical birthplace o ...
, and the Arizona Immigration Law. Among other things, starting in 1982 SCRI has polled presidential scholars in an effort to rate the
United States presidents The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. Under the U.S. Constitution, the officeholder leads the executive branc ...
, as well as the First Ladies. It has also conducted polls as to America's most notable women, television's most memorable moment, and consumer confidence.


''The New York Times''/Siena College

In July 2013, SCRI and ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' began a polling partnership, with its first collaborative poll conducted for the
2013 New York City mayoral election The 2013 New York City mayoral election occurred on November 5, 2013, along with elections for Comptroller, Public Advocate, Borough President, and members of the New York City Council. The incumbent mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg ...
. In 2018, ''The New York Times''/Siena College partnership delivered the first real time Midterm Election polls. In its review of polling conducted during the 2022 midterm elections, FiveThirtyEight found that ''The New York Times''/Siena College partnered polls had the lowest
statistical error In statistics and optimization, errors and residuals are two closely related and easily confused measures of the deviation of an observed value of an element of a statistical sample from its "true value" (not necessarily observable). The erro ...
of all pollsters it measured, tied with
Suffolk University Suffolk University is a private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. With 7,560 students on all campuses, it is the List of colleges and universities in metropolitan Boston, tenth-largest university ...
. It currently holds a 3-star rating from
FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...
, their highest possible rating for a pollster, based on measurements of error, bias, and transparency in methodology. As of 2024, FiveThirtyEight describes ''The New York Times''/Siena College Poll as the most accurate pollster in America. ''The New York Times''/Siena College Poll contacts a
random sample In this statistics, quality assurance, and survey methodology, sampling is the selection of a subset or a statistical sample (termed sample for short) of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole ...
of respondents, with sampling frames drawn from a national voter file of registered voters from data company L2 and supplemented with voter file-matched cellular numbers from market research company Marketing Systems Group. It utilizes live interviewers calling both landlines and cellphones in a dual frame model. For recent polls conducted by ''The New York Times''/Siena College, over 90% of contacts are reached through cell phones and calls are aimed to last under 15 minutes. The poll aims to reach a representative sample of American voters and adjusts for participation bias via stratified sampling, utilizing demographic information from its voter file such as race, party affiliation, and regional location. The poll attempts more contacts with respondents from groups that are less likely to respond. As of 2024, overall response rates to ''The New York Times''/Siena College Poll calls are usually under 2%. A 2022 incentivized poll conducted by ''The New York Times'' as an experiment in partnership with
Ipsos Ipsos Group S.A. (; derived from the Latin expression, ) is a multinational market research and consulting firm with headquarters in Paris, France. The company was founded in 1975 by Didier Truchot, Chairman of the company, and has been publ ...
achieved a 30% response rate while finding similar results to the lower response rate Siena College partnered polls. ''The New York Times''/Siena College Poll has also variously used a turnout model to prioritize calls to a "likely electorate", which is gauged based on trends detected in ''The New York Times''/Siena polls, past election results, and demographic data. This model was utilized for sampling in the 2018 midterm election but not the 2016 presidential election. Completed surveys are weighted for probability of selection by stratum. Demographic weights of likely voters are weighted primarily with modeled turnout estimates from the poll's overall voter file, with adjustments made based on 12 demographic variables. Weighting of registered voter results, instead of likely voters, is conducted directly through characteristics derived from the voter file, without using the turnout model. Demographic information on education is not available in the voter file, and is weighted separately with the
American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual demographics survey program conducted by the United States Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the United States census, decennial census ...
and
Current Population Survey The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 60,000 U.S. households conducted by the United States Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS uses the data to publish reports early each month called the Em ...
from the
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...
. Poll questions are published verbatim in the reports of each poll. When nearing election days, the poll emphasizes results among likely voters over registered voters overall, which is determined through a respondent's voting history and self-reported intention to vote.


See also

* Quinnipiac University Polling Institute * Emerson College Polling * Franklin & Marshall College Poll *
Suffolk University Political Research Center The Suffolk University Political Research Center (SUPRC) is an opinion polling center at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. History, organization, and leadership Founded in 2002, the center mostly conducts national and statewide polls,< ...
* Monmouth University Polling Institute * Marist Institute for Public Opinion


References

{{Reflist, 2


External links


Siena College Research Institute
Colonie, New York Siena College Public opinion research companies in the United States Companies based in New York (state) Companies established in 1980