Exclusive: WSJ taps Biden, Trump pollsters for 2022
- Sara Fischer, author of Axios Media Trends
The News Corp. building on 6th Avenue, home to Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, on March 20, 2019, in New York City. Photo: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images
The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones are making big changes to its polling strategy ahead of the midterms, executives tell Axios.
Why it matters: The company had partnered with NBC News for the past three decades on polling. Now, it's launching a new polling operation without media partners and it's bringing on campaign experts to help, the Journal’s executive Washington editor Jerry Seib told Axios.
- The company has contracted two firms led by John Anzalone, the lead pollster for President Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, and Tony Fabrizio, the lead pollster for former President Trump's presidential 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
- The firms will help put together the new "The Wall Street Journal Poll."
- The quarterly poll will explore political trends and voter sentiments around key issues. The data will be deployed across all Dow Jones properties, including Barron’s, Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch.
The polls will have larger sample sizes, "to add confidence to the results and be able to look at demographic groups with increased statistical reliability," Seib said.
- The company will also be expanding its existing polling partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent, nonpartisan research organization, to do surveys about cultural issues.
The big picture: News companies have had to adjust polling strategies and expectations in the digital era to account for more variables that could cause uncertainty.
- "We have to keep finding ways to reach voters where they are and where they will be responsive, which has been a challenge," Seib said.