Going to the polls last Nov. 4 meant a relatively quick trip into and out of the voting booth. For the polling department at NBC in New York, it was a day-long affair. From the time the polls opened in the morning until they closed at night, an NBC pollster was stopping voters to ask which candidates they had selected. This regular event at NBC is called "Election Day Voter Polling," a survey of 35,000 voters nationwide.


At 1,700 poll stations across the country, an NBC representative polls approximately 30 voters during that day. The voting day is split in half with 15 people polled in the morning and 15 people polled in the afternoon.

Conducting polls is nothing new to NBC. They've been doing it for 15 years. And since September, 1985, NBC has combined its efforts with the Wall Street Journal, creating the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

According to Bill Casey, deputy editor at the Wall Street Journal and liaison for the joint polling, the polls are conducted on general interest, non-specialized topics ranging from politics to social issues. Approximately 10 polls are conducted each year.

"NBC and the Wall Street Journal jointly agree on the event and the timing of the polls. Of course if it's a timely event, like election night, it determines when we will conduct a poll as well as how quickly we need to get the results. "

Collecting the data is a highly scientific process. It starts at NBC where interviewers poll a telephone sampling of 1,600 people nationwide. Polls are conducted for two nights beginning at 5 p.m. and concluding at 10 p.m. local time. This enables NBC to get a full eight hours of interviewing completed each night.

The sample is drawn from 400 locations across the country. Individual households are selected by a probability sample design which is drawn to represent a regional sample. This gives all telephone numbers, listed and unlisted, an equal chance of being selected. The telephone exchanges are then plugged into NBC's computers and the dialing can begin.

One adult, 18 years or older, is chosen from each household. A representative sample of males (approximately 47%), and females (approximately 53%), is obtained. Thus if the quota for males has been reached, only females will be polled for the remainder of the sampling.

Because the procedure involves a scientific sampling of individuals in all 50 states, results are almost precise. The pollers claim chances are 19 of 20 that if all households with telephones in the U.S. had been surveyed using the same questionnaire, the results would differ from the poll findings by no more than three percentage points in either direction.

Polling provides an excellent way to get the public's view on a variety of issues but additionally, to aid in editorial decision-making, said Casey.

"The information we get from the polls helps us know what to emphasize in a story and what's interesting to people. "

Sometimes the Wall Street Journal will conduct focus groups to flesh out and provide qualitative information to go along with the quantitative data which can be retrieved through the polls. In the past year, the Wall Street Journal has conducted 12 focus group sessions. Normally one session is conducted for each topic explored. More sessions are conducted nationally if the responses of participants will vary depending on what part of the country a participant resides or if comparisons need to be made for different regions across the nation.

All articles in the Wall Street Journal which have involved focus groups to get information are written by an editorial staff person who sits in the conference room with the participants or in the observation room of the focus group facility.

"We're involved in the focus group sessions because we want to participate as much as possible," added Casey.