Elway Research, Inc.is a

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

-based

public opinion Public opinion, or popular opinion, is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them. In the 21st century, public opinion is widely thought to be heavily ...

research firm. Since 1975, Elway Research has research projects for major

corporation A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...

media outlets Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises bot ...

, associations, foundations, campaigns and

governmental agencies A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, s ...

at all levels. They publish The Elway Poll, a monthly, independent survey of

Washington state Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington State to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington ...

voters. They directed

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is an American daily newspaper based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891, ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region. The Seattle Time ...

Washington Poll, and have done surveys for

Knight Ridder Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. It was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, allowing the latter to become the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States at the time ...

and

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. They conducted nationally acclaimed citizen engagement programs on government accountability and

performance measurement Performance measurement is the process of collecting, analyzing and/or reporting information regarding the performance of an individual, group, organization, system or component. Definitions of performance measurement tend to be predicated upon an ...

for Washington Governor

Christine Gregoire Christine Gregoire (; née O'Grady; born March 24, 1947) is an American attorney and politician who served as the List of governors of Washington, 22nd governor of Washington, from 2005 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), D ...

and State Auditor

Brian Sonntag Brian S. Sonntag (born December 28, 1951) was the ninth Washington State Auditor. He served five terms, from 1993 until his retirement in 2013. He is a Democrat. Personal Sonntag was born in 1951 in Tacoma, Washington. He attended Tacoma Comm ...

. These programs include computer-aided

town hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

meetings and the first-of-its-kind statewide interactive survey on

live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television where all viewers watch the same stream simultaneously, rather than watching vide ...

. Elway Research also conducted interactive polling as part of the US Navy's “Conversation with the Country,” a multi-city series of town hall meetings as part of the development of a new maritime strategy for the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Criticisms

The Elway Poll came under fire for the accuracy of its polls in the 2008 gubernatorial campaign in Washington state. The Elway Poll showed Gregoire leading by 12 to 16 points, when other polls conducted at that time was only a 4 to 6 point lead for Gregiore. Ultimately, Gregoire won the election by around 6 points. Differentials such as these led some Republican bloggers to discount The Elway Poll results altogether. However, in 2016, the

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 ...

Pollster Ratings gave Elway Research an "A+ grade," finding its results to be biased only half a percentage point more than the mean toward Democratic candidates.

References

External links

Elway Research, Inc.
Public opinion research companies in the United States {{US-company-stub