This Reuters / Ipsos poll began in January 2012 and since then continuously polled between 2,000 and 3,000 people a week. Over that period, we have asked hundreds of questions ranging from presidential politics to the Oscars, from the Syrian civil war to the perception of social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Unlike almost all mainstream polls, the data is entirely collected via online surveys. Online surveys allow us to collect far more data and to be more flexible and fast-moving than phone research, and online is also where the future of polling lies.
This methodology may be different from the ‘traditional’ (telephone) approach used by others, but it is highly accurate: It was the most accurate national poll of US residents published immediately before the November 2012 general election.
Our data is primarily drawn from online surveys using sampling methods developed in consultation with several outside experts. These involve recruiting respondents from the entire population of US-based Internet users in addition to hundreds of thousands of individuals pre-screened by Ipsos. The responses are then weighted based on demographic information.
Because of the volume of demographic information collected, the poll provides unprecedented insight into the myriad of communities that constitute the United States in the 21st century.This window into the population allows users to look at the polling results over time and adjust the aggregated interval of results to maintain a reasonable sample size. Those intervals are five-day rolling average as well as weekly, monthly and overall averages.