Mail Surveys for Election Forecasting? An Evaluation of the Columbus Dispatch Poll

Abstract

Because of slow turnaround time and typically low response rates, mail surveys have generally been considered of little value in election forecasting. However, statewide mail surveys conducted by the Columbus Dispatch newspaper since 1980 have made remarkably accurate forecasts of Ohio election outcomes. In comparison to statewide surveys by two other organizations employing conventional telephone interview methods, the mail surveys were consistently more accurate and were generally less susceptible to sources of inaccuracy such as high rolloff and low publicity. The mail survey's advantage is attributable at least in part to larger sample sizes, sampling and response procedures that yielded more representative samples of voters, lack of the need to allocate undecided respondents, and superior questionnaire design. These findings suggest that mail surveys not only may be viable alternatives to telephone surveys but may actually be superior to them under some conditions. Further-more, these results demonstrate that surveys with low response rates are not necessarily low in validity.