The

Franklin & Marshall College Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It employs 175 full-time faculty members and has a student body of approximately 2,400 full-time students. It was founded upon the merger of Fran ...

Poll (formerly the Keystone Poll) is a prominent Pennsylvania-based

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...

. It is considered the "longest running Pennsylvania statewide poll exclusively directed and produced in the state." The poll tracks citizen opinion on politics, public affairs, public policy, and elections in Pennsylvania
Berwood Yost
director o
F&M’s Center for Opinion Research
is the director and head methodologist for the poll. The Franklin & Marshall College Poll first developed from a poll taken during the

United States Senate special election in Pennsylvania, 1991 The 1991 United States Senate special election in Pennsylvania was held on November 5, 1991, after incumbent Republican Senator John Heinz died in a plane crash on April 4 of that year. Democrat Harris Wofford was appointed to the seat by Govern ...

, pitting incumbent Democrat

Harris Wofford Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. (April 9, 1926 – January 21, 2019) was an American attorney, civil rights activist, and Democratic Party politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1991 to 1995. A noted advocate of na ...

against former Pennsylvania Governor

Dick Thornburgh Richard Lewis Thornburgh (July 16, 1932 – December 31, 2020) was an American lawyer, author, and Republican politician who served as the 41st governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, and then as the United States attorney general fro ...

. In 1992, the poll was formally inaugurated as the Keystone Poll at

Millersville University of Pennsylvania Millersville University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as Millersville University, The Ville, or MU) is a public university in Millersville, Pennsylvania. It is one of the fourteen schools that comprise the Pennsylvania State System of Higher E ...

, with

Terry Madonna G. Terry Madonna is a Senior Fellow in Residence at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. He was Professor of Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. He is also the Director o ...

working as the director of the poll and Berwood Yost, as the head methodologist. Yost and Madonna took positions at

Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lancaster, ( ; pdc, Lengeschder) is a city in and the county seat of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States. With a population at the 2020 census of 58,039, it ranks 11th in population amon ...

in 2003, bringing the poll with them. The poll underwent two significant changes in 2008: it was renamed the Franklin & Marshall College Poll and it was expanded beyond its Pennsylvania roots to study national opinion for 29

Hearst-Argyle Hearst Television, Inc. (formerly Hearst-Argyle Television) is a broadcasting company in the United States owned by Hearst Communications. From 1998 to mid-2009, the company traded its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ...

televisions stations and other media outlets. Madonna retired from Franklin & Marshall College in 2020. During its existence, the poll has been published through a variety of media outlets. In its early years, it was carried by the ''

Philadelphia Daily News ''Philadelphia Daily News'' is a tabloid newspaper that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper is owned by The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC, which also owns Philadelphia's other major newspaper ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''. The ''Dail ...

'' and

KYW-TV KYW-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside CW affiliate WPSG (channel 57 ...

. Later, the Fox 29 replaced KYW and the '' Harrisburg Patriot News'' and the ''

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review The ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'', also known as "the Trib," is the second largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Although it transitioned to an all-digital format on December 1, 2016, it rem ...

'' began carrying the poll. In 2002, the

Comcast Network The Comcast Network (TCN) was an American cable television network owned by the Comcast Corporation Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was C ...

replaced Fox 29. The statewide distribution now includes

WPVI-TV WPVI-TV (channel 6), branded on-air as 6 ABC, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station ...

WGAL-TV WGAL (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States, serving the Susquehanna Valley region as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by Hearst Television, the station maintains studios on Columbia Avenue ( PA 462) in ...

,News 8 Franklin and Marshall College poll released
" Lancaster, Pennsylvania: WGAL-TV, September 26, 2012.

WTAE-TV WTAE-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by Hearst Television since the station's inception, making this one of two stations that have been built and signed on ...

, and the

Times-Shamrock Communications Times-Shamrock Communications is an American media company based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The company, owned by the Lynett and Haggerty families of Scranton, lists among its assets four daily newspapers, six weekly newspapers, and nine radio stati ...

References

External links

Survey ReleasesFranklin & Marshall College Poll NewsletterCenter for Opinion ResearchCenter for Politics and Public Affairs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Franklin and Marshall College Poll Public opinion research companies in the United States Franklin & Marshall College Politics of Pennsylvania

See also

References

External links