Posts Tagged: Mark DiCamillo

Podcast

Capitol Weekly Podcast: Mark DiCamillo

Mark DiCamillo at the offices of the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. (Photo: IGS)

To anyone who follows California politics, Mark DiCamillo is a familiar name indeed. He directed the Field Poll for decades, and he now heads the Berkeley IGS Poll at the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. He sat down with Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to talk about the latest trends in opinion surveying and how these may play out this election year.

Analysis

CA120: The changing nature of public polls

An image depicting the varied responses in political polling. (Illustration: Tim Foster/Capitol Weekly),

ANALYSIS: The public opinion polling industry in many ways is at a crossroads. For years public polls were run with live telephone interviews using a system of “random digit dialing” or RDD, which allowed a poll to be based on samples which would be naturally balanced since all potential voters had the same probability to be administered a phone survey.

Analysis

Poll: Close divide on death penalty

The attitudes of voters. Illustration by Niroworld, via Shutterstock.

Field-IGS Poll: Nearly a quarter of likely voters in the poll (23%) said they were intending to vote Yes on both death penalty measures, even though they have opposite aims. This may partially be due to confusion about the intent of Prop. 66, or simply that some voters want to change the status quo of how the state now handles death penalty cases, regardless of how it’s done.

News

Veteran California pollster heads online

Image by Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly

One of the state’s most respected polls has begun incorporating online surveys for the first time, underscoring the increasing difficulty of relying on telephone questioning. The Field Poll, which was founded in 1947, started using online surveys to gather voter opinion on nine of the 17 statewide ballot propositions that will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

News

Poll: Death penalty repeal narrowly backed

San Quentin state prison, home of California's death row, which currently holds nearly 750 inmates. (Photo: Mark R., via Shutterstock)

Field Poll: Proposition 62, the initiative to repeal the death penalty in California and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole, is narrowly supported by likely voters. The latest Field-IGS Poll finds 48% of likely voters saying they intend to vote Yes when presented with the official ballot summary that voters will see when voting on Prop. 62 in the November election.

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