Independent analyses from publications such as Wall Street Journal, National Council on Public Polls, American Association of Public Opinion Research, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com, and The Pew Research Center all show automated, recorded voice surveys performing better or at least comparable to conventional, live interviewer surveys. Below are excerpts from these publications.

The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2008 - “…interactive voice response polls, or IVRs, were as accurate [in the 2008 elections] as live-interview surveys, and more thorough…”

National Council on Public Polls, December 18, 2008 - “For [2008] telephone surveys usinglive interviewers, the average error was 2.0 percentage points. It was 1.8 percentage points for IVR...”

American Association of Public Opinion Research, April 2009 - “The use of either computerized telephone interviewing [CATI] techniques or interactive voice response [IVR] techniques made no difference to the accuracy of estimates [in 2008 primary election polls].”

FiveThirtyEight.com, May 28, 2008 - "Pollster ratings, accounting for the Democratic contests in NorthCarolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky Ohio and Oregon show that two of the top three most accurate polls were conducted by IRV."

The Pew Research Center, June 25, 2009 - “For 253 polls across the country during the last week of the 2008 campaign, The mean error among IVR polls (1.7%) was slightly lower than among those with live interviewers (2.1%).”