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The Independent Center (IC) and Bullfinch Group partner to provide objective, nonpartisan polling and survey insights on political independents, key issues, and other major areas.
With the help of data driven insights powered by our proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) modeling, the Independent Center and the Bullfinch Group are able to transcend the two party lens in favor of a far more insightful, useful and dynamic view of Americans and politics.
The Bullfinch Group was born from a simple idea: if they produce unbiased data, appreciate varying perspectives, and believe there is common ground to be found, a tremendous amount can be accomplished.
Today’s world is full of intricacies and complexities. But for most polling companies, America's rich and diverse voting population is reduced down to a world that is boxed into a binary choice - Republican or Democrat affiliation.
Frustrating? Feel our voice is not being heard? We agree.
Shedding the partisan lens and preferences allow’s the Independent Center and the Bullfinch Group to view quantitative data in an authentic and unadulterated manner.
Our approach and polling methodology allows us to identify important new angles to understand the modern American voter and generate new authentic insights.
Our polling insights challenge the traditional polling approaches and often result in being the first to break new polling results and unique narratives to help understand American voting audiences. While sometimes we appear to be the outliers all too often in a matter of days or weeks our results are validated by many others.
1. Transparency: we aim to be as transparent as we can, to draft questions and align the question order in a non-leading way
We don’t manipulate the question or response direction through subsequent questions. For example if we asked “which is your favorite flavor: chocolate, strawberry or vanilla” and you answer strawberry, we don't then pose a follow up question to box a respondant like “But if you had to pick between chocolate and vanilla?” This technique not only dishonors the respondants’ response but also artificially enhances one answer over another.
We also don’t over elaborate on questions to influence the response, for example “do you like bland vanilla or delicious slow-churned chocolate ice cream?”
2. Weighting Data: we are not big fans of weighting data
We try to put as little human fingerprint on the data as possible. This is critical. The Independent Center overall is a data driven organization, from our polling to our data analytics and use of artificial intelligence to uncover data insights,
Instead, Bullfinch Group prefers to set flex quotas prior to going in to the field so as to not weight once out of the field. For example, in the case of a representative survey of the American voting population where we want roughly 52% Demographic X and 48% Demographic Y we would aim to capture as many respondents as possible when out in the field. We would set a 1-point flex on that so if it came out to 53/47 or 51/49 we would be okay and still true to the raw data.
This matters because if more people of Demographic X are enthusiastic about responding to a survey, we must let the data tell the story, rather than negate it and weigh that sentiment down.
Typically other pollsters may weight this data back to what they had set for other recent surveys. This is done in order to claim they are “comparing apples to apples’. This misses an important point of Bullfinch Group's approach to surveying, we want to capture and compare public sentiment then to public sentiment now, rather than comparing prior polls to recent polls.
There are various thoughts on these methods, but our chosen approach is to prefer to not touch the data after it comes back from the field. This may certainly result in outlier results from Independent Center and Bullfinch Group polling. But we are not going to weight the candidate up or down. We let the data speak for itself, the data are the actual responses from the public, and for us, real public sentiment drives the numbers.
3. Nonpartisan: we want real and unbiased insights
Lastly, and this is always important but especially so in Presidential campaigns, we don’t have a dog in the fight.
We are not pro-Harris; we are not pro-Trump; we are not pro-Democrat or pro-Republican. We actively seek to take a nonpartisan independent approach that is true to sharing unbiased data so decisions can be informed based on public sentiment.
Together, the Bullfinch Group and the Independent Center seek out insights in data to find different angles to uncover new information which often keeps us ahead of the rest of the polling market. From our polling on LGBTQ+ voters, to our survey on West Coast Voters, we strive to constantly provide new interesting polling insights in an ever-changing political climate.
We also believe that the purpose of polling is to capture the voice of the American people. This is why the Independent Center and the Bullfinch Group include series like We Can Do Better, to ensure that independent voices and opinions are brought forward and heard.
We are one of the few organization that specifically polls self identifying independent voters, starting in Nov 2023, with our ground breaking National Independent Voter Survey. Independent voters are a pluralistic majority and deserve to be heard and represented in a media awash with analysis and polling from either a Democrat or Republican lens.
We invite you to join us in this endeavor of seeing past the partisan noise. What’s more, we’re eager to provide you with a legitimate snapshot of the American electorate, rather than project partisan messaging.
Interested in getting early access to our monthly polls? Or collaborating on a poll with us? Sign up for our latest news and let us know if you want to get involved.
We're building a movement of independent-thinkers. Join us to make our voices heard in Washington!