- Siena College Polls Earn A- to Rank in Top 14 of 400+ Pollsters Nationally
Loudonville, NY. The Siena College/New York Times Upshot Poll was one of only six pollsters to earn an “A+” grade from the respected FiveThirtyEight.com, led by Nate Silver. The New York Times Upshot/Siena College polled 57 congressional districts during the 2018 election cycle, correctly projecting the winner in 48 of those contests.
Additionally, the Siena College Poll, conducted exclusively by the Siena College Research Institute, was one of only 14 polling organizations to earn an “A-” or better among more than 400 pollsters graded by FiveThirtyEight.com. The Siena College Poll covered statewide elections in New York as well as several New York congressional races not polled by the New York Times Upshot/Siena College in the 2018 cycle. That puts Siena in two slots in the top three percent of polling organizations nationally. It is the fourth consecutive time the Siena College Poll has been graded A or A- by FiveThirtyEight.com.
“We are pleased but not surprised that the Siena College Research Institute has been graded and ranked so highly by FiveThirtyEight.com,” said Margaret E. Madden, Ph.D., interim president of Siena College. “The accuracy of the SCRI polls have long been documented, and their operation is widely respected by journalists, elected officials, economists and the public. We look forward to the results of their ongoing polling efforts during the 2020 election cycle.”
FiveThirtyEight.com’s grading for all polling organizations can be found on their website here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/.
In an article accompanying the ratings, Silver wrote: “Four of the top five, and six of the 10 best pollsters according to this metric were exclusively live-caller telephone polls. In exciting news for fans of innovative polling, the list includes polls from our friends at The New York Times’s Upshot, who launched an extremely successful and accurate polling collaboration with Siena College in 2016. (It also includes ABC News, FiveThirtyEight’s corporate parent, which usually conducts its polls jointly with The Washington Post.)”
“The incredible team at the Siena College Research Institute – from programmers, researchers and writers to supervisors and callers – has worked incredibly hard and we couldn’t be prouder that our collective efforts have been recognized because of the success we were able to achieve in districts in more than 27 states, and of course, here at home in New York,” said Dr. Don Levy, Director of the Siena College Research Institute.
“Our partners at the New York Times Upshot, led by Nate Cohn and a team of outstanding journalists and professionals, created a collaborative effort between the ‘newspaper of record’ and Siena College that resulted in congressional polling that millions of Americans were watching in real time at Upshot,” Levy said.
“Helping to advance the mission of Siena College – a wonderful learning community advancing the ideals of a liberal arts education – is something we do every day. Being recognized nationally by FiveThirtyEight.com and Nate Silver as one of the best polling organizations in the country is another feather in Siena’s cap thanks to those great people at SCRI,” Levy said. “Let the 2020 cycle begin.”
