Draft:Collaborative Midterm Survey

The Collaborative Midterm Survey is a public opinion survey and election poll on the 2022 United States midterm elections funded by the National Science Foundation.

The project was led by co-principal investigators based at Cornell University Peter K. Enns, Professor at the Department of Government, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Associate Professor of Communication and Executive Director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and Colleen L. Barry, inaugural Dean of the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. James Druckman, professor at Northwestern University, Election Polling Director at Univision Television Network and University of Texas at Austin professor Sergio García-Ríos, Associate Director of Research at Pew Research Center Juliana Horowitz, and Dean of the Goldman School at the University of California, Berkeley David C. Wilson were senior advisors to the project.

Data collection began two weeks before the November 8 election. At nearly 20,000 voters, the study’s sample was multiple times the size of typical national representative samples, which range between 1,000 and 7,000 respondents.

Contribution to Election and Survey Research

The project's objective was aimed at innovating new approaches to surveying and election polling. In light of election poll limitations and declining participation rates in prior years, the CMS selected applications from three separate research teams at SSRS, the Iowa Social Science Research Center and Gradient Metrics and Survey 160 that used a range of new and traditional sampling techniques to recruit respondents. In addition to standard election choice polling, it asked over 200 questions on a wide range of topics including the pandemic, race relations, and climate change in an update to the American National Election Studies (ANES), which had been paused two decades prior due to cost concerns.

In 2023, the CMS convened a hackathon on data, methods, and innovation with survey and election experts from industry, academia, and media. Panelists included CNN Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta, Nate Cohn from The New York Times, Microsoft Research's David Rothschild and Mark Hugo Lopez of Pew Research Center.

Project and individual-level data from the survey were made available to be analyzed, used, and published by the wider scientific research community using a CMS Data Visualization Tool.