Suffolk University Organizes Elections Polling

With the upcoming Presidential and senatorial elections, voters and candidates often rely on polling to determine the weight of the election. Most of this polling is done by independent agencies, but one of the largest polling institutions in Massachusetts is run through Suffolk University’s Political Research Center.

David Paleologos is the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center (SUPRC), and has conducted polls since 2002. He has managed polls in statewide elections and presidential primaries in battleground states like New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada. These results are heavily relied on by almost all major news organizations.

Paleologos and the Political Research Center also features several students and alumni, who moderated and collected data at the Suffolk booth in Manchester during the New Hampshire primaries. The methods used by the polling team depends on the laws and regulations of each state.

Suffolk’s polls have an incomparable accuracy rate, with a margin of error of two percent. It gained notoriety when it was the only poll to predict that Hilary Clinton would beat Barack Obama in the 2008 New Hampshire primary and was the first to predict Mass. Senator Scott Brown’s win over Martha Coakley in 2010. Paleologos’ team is now working on the poll for the Mass. senate race between Brown and Elizabeth Warren.

Paleologos is an adjunct faculty member in Suffolk’s Department of Government where he teaches “Political Survey Research.”

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