Surveys and Exit Polls

Fall 2016 Colonel’s Canvass Poll

Fall 2015 Colonel’s Canvass Poll

Spring 2015 Colonel’s Canvass Poll

 

 

Boyle County Exit Poll, 2011-present

The “Boyle County Exit Poll” is an on-going pedagogical and community engagement project run by Dr. Benjamin Knoll in the fall semesters of election years. Numerous students are engaged from a variety of political science courses. The poll serves three purposes: 1) an experiential learning and research opportunity for Centre College students interested in politics, 2) a service provided by Centre College to the wider Danville/Boyle community, and 3) a research venue for the instructor.

More information and analysis from these exit polls can be found under the “Exit Poll” tag here on this website: https://informationknoll.wordpress.com/category/exit-poll/. Specific information about selected individual polls can be found below.

One interesting finding of this survey is that evidence from 2011-2016 indicates that Republicans grew increasingly likely to decline to participate while Democrats become more enthusiastic to do so. This can potentially help explain why polling in the 2016 election underestimated Trump’s level of support in other similar states with a large rural population.

 

2014 Danville Public Issues Survey

Details: This January 2014 survey population included all households in Danville city limits. To produce the household sample, we obtained a list of every residential address within Danville city limits from the county PVA. We then generated a randomized sub-sample of each address and assigned each of our students to distribute surveys to those addresses and only those addresses (this is to maintain the integrity of the random sample). If no one was at home, students were instructed to return to those same addresses up to three times to obtain a response. Students were further instructed to field surveys during the late afternoons/early evenings as well as some morning to try to maximize the amount of responses from households. These surveys were completely anonymous and it is not possible to link any particular respondent with his or her answers after the survey is collected. Students fielded surveys beginning on Monday, January 20th and ending on Saturday, January 25th. For this survey, a total of 183 Danville residents over the age of 18 choose to participate. Given that the adult population of Danville is approximately 12,500 (as per the U.S. Census Bureau), a randomly-selected sample size of 183 gives us a margin of error of about 7%.

Data: A public data file is available for examination and analysis by interested parties. Any public documents (blog posts, academic articles, conference papers, newspaper editorials, etc.) produced using this data should cite and reference the poll and its author. Also, the document should include a disclaimer that neither the author nor Centre College are responsible for the interpretations or conclusions of the analysis.

Click here to download.

This survey included questions about Danville’s attitudes toward various elected officials, local issues (connector road land usage, Fairness Ordinance), and media consumption. A write-up of the results of this survey can be found by clicking here.