The MP Reader Survey

Legacy blog posts MP Housekeeping

As I mentioned in the last post, I created a short online survey about this site that you can fill out by clicking this link. If you have read this blog, I would appreciate it if you would take 3-5 minutes and compete the survey. It will not track respondent identities, and as such, your participation is completely anonymous and confidential.

Why a reader survey now?

After the election, I need to do some thinking about the future of this blog. I am a pollster, after all, and it is hard for me to think about anything without survey data.

Since some of you have already asked via email, however, let me be clear: I am certainly not planning to use responses to this survey to try to predict how many of you will return in the future. I have no illusions: Most of you are obsessed with polls right now because of the election. The traffic to this site will fall off big time right after the election, and I will have all sorts of hard numbers on that.

However, I am very curious about the snapshot of who is reading this blog right now, why, how you got here and what you think about it. I’d also want to use the survey to take a closer look at those who think they might want to return every now and then, even at times when an election is months or eyars away.

One last point for those of you who miss no irony: This survey is certainly NOT based on a random sample. It is what some call a “convenience” sample; a survey that will reflect nothing more than the views of those who choose to complete it. I expect that the respondents will be hugely biased toward regular readers. In this case, however, regular readers are the universe I care about most.

So, again, if you have found this site useful, please take a moment and complete the survey. If you have problems with the survey, please email me. Feel free to post comments or email them (but I will not be able to answer much mail until after the election).

The last big post on likely voter models coming soon…

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is the principal at MysteryPollster, LLC. With decades of experience in polling using traditional and innovative online methods, he is uniquely positioned to advise survey researchers, progressive organizations and candidates and the public at-large on how to adapt to polling’s ongoing reinvention. He was previously head of election polling at SurveyMonkey, senior polling editor for The Huffington Post, co-founder of Pollster.com and a long-time campaign consultant who conducted and analyzed political polls and focus groups for Democratic party candidates.