NPR: "NPS" Offers a New Way to Survey Voters

"NPS" Offers a New Way to Survey Voters

You know what it's like when you find a restaurant that you really like? Or a mechanic who does a great job .. and is cheap? Or a movie that leaves you breathless? You just want to tell everyone about it.

Well, public opinion researchers (also known as pollsters) have a term for this feeling: Net Promoter Score, or NPS. (Those of us who work on the Internet might use another word to describe it - viral ... you pass it along because you like it -- think of the number of YouTube videos your friends have sent you.)

Now NPS is being "adapted from the world of consumer research" and used "to measure voter enthusiasm and passion for a candidate." Pollsters are asking a simple question: "On a 0 to 10 scale, with 0 being "not at all likely" and 10 being "extremely likely," how likely is it that you would recommend voting for [INSERT CANDIDATE NAME] in the next election to a friend or colleague?"

As pollster Alex Landry (research director at the Republican polling firm, TargetPoint Consulting) writes at Pollster.com, "The NPS is calculated by subtracting the number of detractors (ratings of 0-6) from the number of promoters (ratings of 9 and 10). In the business world, +16 is the median score of more than 400 companies across 28 industries; CostCo has one of the highest known scores at +81.

"Studies have shown a direct and significant correlation between a business' score and company growth - specifically, a 7 point increase in overall NPS or a 2 point reduction in the percentage of detractors can each account for one percent of positive growth, thus indicating the potential electoral consequences of this measure once adapted to political polling."

Landry notes that NPS has its detractors, and it doesn't have a long history in political polling. But when it was tried in 2005-2006, it indicated that the Republicans were in more trouble than many people thought they were -- which turned out to be true.

Landry offers some interesting results for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Definitely worth a read.

5:06 PM ET | 03-28-2008 | permalink

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