Dean Debnam, founder and President of Public Policy Polling (PPP), has over 30 years experience in creating and growing businesses. He also has an active interest in politics and public policy. His business savvy made him question the inefficiencies he saw in politics and led him to create PPP.

Dean saw that campaigns and advocacy organizations often allocated huge sums to survey research that could be better spent elsewhere. He also noticed that the price of survey research kept smaller organizations from enjoying the benefits of measuring public opinion.

In response, Dean created PPP in 2001 to measure and track public opinion in an affordable way. PPP's technology allows us to track public opinion more often and on a wide range of issues. Based in Raleigh, Public Policy Polling wants to provide that service for North Carolina.

The Technology

Public Policy Polling is riding a new wave of polling technology called Interactive Voice Response or IVR. Just as polling changed from mail-in surveys and door-to-door interviewers to live telephone interviewers, the industry is now evolving into automated telephone surveys (IVR) and internet polling.

IVR technology drastically reduces the expense of polling and allows us to complete surveys faster, usually in one evening. Pollsters Survey USA and Rasmussen Reports have lead the charge nationally for this budding segment of the polling industry. Public Policy Polling has been the leader in North Carolina since its beginning in 2001.

In addition to cost and time advantages, IVR technology has helped to poll more accurately. We can reduce interviewer bias to zero by eliminating the live human interviewer. Every poll respondent hears the exact same questions read the exact same way. We also utilize the voter registration database for most of our surveys. Calling only registered or likely voters will get a much more accurate sample of the target populations for most political and campaign based polling.

Click here to read a summary of the discussion on automated polling and its advantages and disadvantages compared to traditional telephone polling, prepared by PPP intern Nebula Li.