Will Pollsters Get Sandy In Their Eye?

Mark Blumenthal looks into how the storm may affect polling crack:

As reported by The Huffington Post on Friday, pollsters conducting national surveys will have to decide whether to continue calling this week if, as estimated, power outages and other disruptions affect upwards of 10 million Americans. The Gallup organization "will most likely suspend all of our national tracking if we feel the representativeness of the data in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast is likely to be compromised" by the storm, according to Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport. Via email, Newport reports that Gallup "will make a final decision later this morning."

As forecasts tracked a likely landfall for Hurricane in New Jersey, observers noted that the Garden State is home to the corporate headquarters of a number of pollsters, including Gallup, Rasmussen Reports, SurveyUSA and Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI), a call center that conducts interviews for the Pew Research Center, among other clients. However, pollsters that use live interviewers typically locate their calling facilities apart from their corporate offices. Gallup, for example, maintains call centers in Nebraska, and PSRAI's main calling facility is located in Stafford Virginia.