Whether you’re covering presidential politics or hot issues like gay marriage, it always helps to have your finger on the pulse of America. PollingReport.com is an independent, nonpartisan site that I recommend for the latest poll data.
The page on the Democratic race for the White House has summaries of all the major polls — the latest data, plus the older results dating back to last fall so you can see how candidates have risen and fallen.
PollingReport.com also includes pages and pages of polls on Bush, Cheney, Congress, the direction of the country, consumer confidence, and other national issues.
Perhaps most useful to beat reporters is the section of the latest opinion polls on a variety of hot topics in the news. Some of the topics, for example, include gay marriage, TV standards and practices and mad cow disease.
In addition to the free content, the site offers additional data for subscribers, including state-by-state election poll data: campaign polls, media polls, academic polls, and polls by political, business, and public-interest groups. Depending on your job, it might be worth paying the $95 subscription fee to get access to the full website and the twice-a-month newsletter.
But even the free content available makes PollingReport.com register high on the journalistic usefulness scale.
P.S. Don’t forget to include margin of error and sample size when citing a poll.
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