Background

The 2009 Jackson, MS, Democratic primary was quickly approaching. The incumbent mayor was in the midst of a federal criminal trial and a host of candidates had surfaced to challenge him. We had several friends in the race but no candidates who were clients. The dynamics of the race intrigued us and prompted us to do some survey work for public dissemination.

No clear frontrunner among the candidates had emerged. The Jackson community seemed to be reticent to discuss the issues in the election. We felt something needed to be done to stoke the fire of healthy discussion.

We sampled over 500 voter phone households in each of four weekly waves using our Zata|Pulse™ interactive automated survey. Our call targets were a rough approximation of historical voter registration and turnout. We tracked respondents’ self-identification by age, race, and gender but did not weight the survey by these demographics or by voter frequency.

We used an interactive, automated call with keypad responses to record results. We randomized the target list and dialed with a quota of respondents by ward. As the name suggests, our Zata|Pulse™ takes the “pulse” of the electorate. It is not an “MRI.” It is a useful tool for short surveys of this nature and we have used it for more than 200 races across the country.

With a margin of error of ± 5%, our results were startlingly accurate. In fact, our survey outperformed expensive live polls conducted by regional polling firms. The surveys provoked healthy debate and a good deal of media coverage, shedding light on a murky election picture, and they proved to be as useful as traditional live surveys while costing considerably less to produce..