Top pollsters create group to promote data accuracy: National Association of Independent Pollsters

Prominent pollster Rich Baris announced the creation of a new organization, the National Association of Independent Pollsters, with other well-known pollsters. 

"The polling industry has evolved a lot and, as it has, so have the standards and methodologies that we all debate, and that debate has a place, but somewhere in it, it really just got lost upon us what our true value is to the American public," Baris said on the Thursday edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show.

Other groups joining the organization, besides Big Poll Data, which is directed by Baris, include Big Data Poll, InsiderAdvantage, Trafalgar Group, and Rasmussen Reports, according to Newsmax.

Trafalgar Group founder Robert Cahaly told the news outlet that the purpose of the group is to bring attention to accurate polling in a sea of inaccurate polling.

“Well, what we’ve noticed is that there seems to be kind of no punishment, no ramifications for getting it wrong," Cahaly told Newsmax. "So many of these mainstream media polls, these university polls consistently get the elections wrong.”

Baris told Just the News that the polling world is very much like an elitist club.

"It's been an adversarial environment to some of us who have done a very good job, and that's because it's the same thing you deal with in the media," Baris said. "We deal with it here. It's a club, and they want that club to remain. They want to be the members of that club and those who dominate it."

Baris went on to praise the other polling groups that are joining to create the new organization.

"These guys have done a great job," Baris said, referencing Rasmussen Reports and Trafalgar. "These are people who have, and this is part of the criteria for membership...you can't just have a one-off election. You have to have a published track record of accuracy."

Membership will be by invitation only and based on “a cumulative record of published public polling with a high degree of accuracy/low error rate,” according to The Washington Examiner. “We don’t need to set any standards, given that anyone who is a member or future member of this organization has already established that they are among the most accurate pollsters in America,” Baris told the newspaper.

"There are just too many polls and not enough pollsters," Baris said. "And the public is being flooded. Congressmen and women are being flooded with all of these numbers and inundated, and the truth is, not all polls are created equal."