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Polling can provide a pulse check on how Americans feel about politics and policy. That’s why The 19th and SurveyMonkey have partnered for three years to bring both rapid-response insights and in-depth surveys exploring core issues in our coverage. 

SurveyMonkey polled more than 20,000 American adults on politics, abortion, gender-affirming care, guns, contraception and other issues of key importance to voters. Here’s why we tackled this project again — and how.

Why poll?

We talk to a lot of people in the course of our reporting on issues that disproportionately affect women, particularly women of color, and LGBTQ+ people. That reporting is invaluable, but it’s just one tool and one that doesn’t always give us the widest view. Polls shed light on what women and LGBTQ+ people across America think about the state of the country — its politics, its politicians and its systems. 

Our annual “State of Our Union” poll has revealed a number of dynamics that have helped inform our coverage: that Americans don’t trust politicians to make abortion policy; that as voters, they were motivated by the economy and preserving democracy; and that personal relationships with trans people inform how Americans think about gender-affirming care.

Often as we report on other polls, we run into a lack of data on smaller segments of the American population, such as transgender people. SurveyMonkey’s reach allows us to collect significant insight into the views of the communities we cover, which are often overlooked in traditional polling. We want to know how our country’s systems are working. What is motivating people? Where do they run into barriers? Doing our own poll with SurveyMonkey is a chance to get new, more detailed data that is centered on the people and perspectives our journalism seeks to elevate.

What’s different in this year’s ‘The State of Our Nation’ poll? 

We sharpened our focus this year to ask about some of the top policy questions that have been debated during the presidential election cycle: access to contraception, assisted reproductive technology and what subjects should be taught in schools.

We also asked about voting plans and other ways people are planning on engaging in the election this year. We removed questions about workplace harassment and health care discrimination, which we have already covered extensively. 

We ran a few experiments to see whether question-wording impacted the results. We found that when it comes to gender-affirming care for minors, personal feelings do not necessarily translate to desires for bans. Sixty percent of Americans said they do not support the right for transgender youth to receive gender-affirming care, but only 46 percent of the population was in favor of restricting that form of health care. 

We also tried to measure the impact Harris’ gender may have on voter enthusiasm and found that to be a factor in how women are perceiving her campaign — even if she is not framing it around her historic run.

How this poll worked (plus how polls work generally)

In any public opinion poll, not everyone in the country is asked for their opinion. Pollsters reach out to a representative sample of people and ask a series of questions. Most often, the outreach occurs through calls to landlines or cell phones, though now some pollsters use online or text message surveys. By contrast, SurveyMonkey, our partner, leverages the reach of its online survey service, which engages more than 2 million people a day, to select a random sample of respondents and ask if they’re willing to answer more questions. 

For this 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll, 20,762 American adults took the survey. The modeled error estimate — the equivalent of a traditional margin of error for surveys of this type — is plus or minus one percentage point. That means the true value of any number for the total number of respondents is expected to be at most one point more or less than what is reported in this survey, at a 95 percent level of confidence. For results based on subgroups, the error estimate will be higher.

SurveyMonkey goes into more detail here.

But how do you know these answers are accurate?

Even if a pollster is really careful with sampling in the traditional manner, they won’t have an exact replica of the total U.S. population. That’s where weighting comes in. SurveyMonkey, like many other pollsters, compares the population who answered the poll to data collected as a part of the Census’s American Community Survey (ACS) along axes of race, sex, age, education and geography. Then the data is weighted so that it matches the population at large. For example, if a survey had significantly more women respondents than men, weighting ensures that the reported results aren’t skewed due to the sample.

It is difficult to accurately weigh along areas where the Census does not collect data, like sexuality or gender identity beyond the binary. This year SurveyMonkey was able to weight our subset of transgender respondents by gender and party affiliation, using parameters from a new KFF/Washington Post survey of transgender adults.

What are the limitations of the survey language?

People describe themselves in a lot of ways; the ACS has more limited options. (As The 19th has previously covered, the Census Bureau only started explicitly gathering data on LGBTQ+ individuals in 2021.) To ensure accurate weighting, certain demographic questions in polls must mirror the ACS. That means the phrasing for several questions on our survey deviated from our editorial guidelines around language, which were created to promote clarity as well as equity. 

Starting in 2024, our polls with SurveyMonkey ask respondents if they identify as a man, a woman, are nonbinary or prefer to self-describe. In polls from 2022 and 2023, when respondents were asked how they identify their gender, they were given only three options: male, female or “not listed/non-conforming.” We used the term “nonbinary” in our reporting to refer to the population that identified as “not listed/non-conforming,” consistent with the recommendation of the Trans Journalist Association. A follow-up question asked respondents whether they identified as transgender.

In a similar vein, The 19th uses the term Latinx to describe people of Latin American origin or descent. However, the ACS refers to this category as Hispanic or Latino, which is the phrasing used in our survey questions. (We are reporting the results as “Latinx.”) 

Again, SurveyMonkey’s methods allow us to capture a wide range of perspectives and highlight views from segments of the population in a way that a lot of polls don’t allow. But it’s important to also acknowledge our limitations.

Do we still trust polls?

We trust them to do what they’re supposed to do: give us information about public opinion at a certain point in time. By themselves, they’re not intended to predict what will happen, and there’s always some error inherent in any polling figure. That’s why we share how the survey was conducted and the estimate for the potential error. 

You can see the full data here and the questionnaire here.

Have more questions on how this poll was done, or how polls work in general? Share them with us. 

Methodology: This 19th News “State of Our Nation” poll was powered by SurveyMonkey, the fast, intuitive feedback management platform where 20 million questions are answered daily. It was conducted online from August 26, 2024, through September 4, 2024, among a national sample of 20,762 US adults 18+. Respondents were selected from the more than two million people who take surveys on SurveyMonkey each day. Results for this non-probability survey have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.0 percentage point. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States aged 18 and over. In addition, data for transgender respondents have been weighted for political party identification and gender using the KFF/The Washington Post Trans Survey to reflect the demographic composition of that subgroup. Learn more about SurveyMonkey elections research.