When
the
faculty
leading
BW's
Community
Research
Institute
(CRI)
devised
a
plan
to
expand
2020
election
year
polling
from
Ohio-only
to
three
other
key
Midwest
swing
states,
they
never
imagined
the
impact
the
new
BW
Great
Lakes
Poll
would
have.
But the work of political science professors Dr. Lauren Copeland and Dr. Thomas Sutton, and mathematics professor Dr. Aaron Montgomery, has been featured by news media around the world and has given a group of BW students a front-row seat to democracy in action.
The series of four surveys in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, kicked off by taking voters' temperature in January, surveyed voters again in March and concluded with polls in September and October.
As Copeland recently recalled for Margin of Error, the idea was to focus on states critical to the 2020 election outcome.
"We
were
also
interested
in
whether
Ohio
was
still
a
battleground
and
bellwether
state,"
Copeland
explained.
Data and analysis from the BW Great Lakes Poll, conducted in partnership with Oakland University and Ohio Northern University, have taken the already growing influence of CRI to a new level with media pickup, guest columns and interviews from Ohio to Washington D.C. to Finland to Russia.
Coverage of the final poll has included Newsweek, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS Newshour, the BBC, London Evening Standard, Sputnik International and many, many more, plus coverage across the state and region including a large body of work by cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer.
Prior polls and analyses were featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and NBC News. One NBC political reporter called the four-state polling "invaluable."
"Every time we released new results, we heard from an expanding list of reporters working to better understand the dynamics of this crucial election," said Sutton.
Away
from
the
high-profile
media
coverage,
there
is
another
success
that
is
near
and
dear
to
the
CRI
faculty
team:
the
hands-on
learning
opportunity
for
students
enrolled
in
the
BW
faculty-student
collaboration
course
tied
to
the
Great
Lakes
Poll.
"It was a real honor to have worked on something this big and to see it in the news," said BW political science major Liam Reilley '22. "That was a real thrill."
Cameron Monaghan '21, also a political science major, was intrigued by the give and take surrounding the precise wording of each question. "Those discussions not only improved the quality of the survey, but they also gave students a much better understanding of question design," Monaghan said.
According to Copeland, CRI is thriving as a research methods laboratory. "The 20 students involved in this project inspired some important survey questions. They also experienced a behind-the-scenes look at public opinion polling, including the nuances of survey research design, data analysis, weighting, as well as how to communicate our results to the public. I'm grateful I've had the opportunity to work with them."
