Quinnipiac (“Q-poll”) & Marist polls

Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Connecticut) is famous for its "Q-Poll" of local politics and issues. The polling started about 1990.

Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York) began its Marist Institute of Public Opinion in 1978.

New York City itself has many colleges, but they just haven't been involved much in the polling business. The polls from Quinnipiac and Marist regularly make front-page news each election season.

Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice strongly criticized the Q-Poll for not including enough Spanish speakers and under-reporting Fernando Ferrer's numbers in the 2005 mayoral race, thus discouraging Ferrer's fundraising.

http://www.maristpoll.marist.edu/about.htm
Founded in 1978, the Marist Institute for Public Opinion (MIPO) is a survey research center at Marist College. MIPO provides educational opportunities for students and information on elections, policy, and popular issues for the public. MIPO regularly measures public opinion across the nation, in New York State and New York City. The Marist Institute for Public Opinion is used as a source by print and broadcast media organizations throughout the country. MIPO is directed by Dr. Lee M. Miringoff and Dr. Barbara L. Carvalho. Marist students are given a front row seat to the political process through polling, internships, conferences, seminars, and coursework.

In the fall of 1995, MIPO inaugurated a Marist Poll Package for participating television stations across the country, which generates even more exposure for what Newsday calls "one of the most widely respected surveys...and a key player in shaping news coverage for a decade."

MIPO is unique in that undergraduate students at Marist are involved in each poll, allowing students to weave political science, computing, communications, marketing, and psychology into an interdisciplinary learning experience. MIPO's work is in keeping with Marist's philosophy of combining a liberal arts/values-centered education with the technological tools to advance the knowledge gained in the classroom.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x11358.xml
Frequently cited by journalists, public officials and researchers, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll regularly surveys residents in Connecticut, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and nationwide about political races, state and national elections, and issues of public concern, such as schools, taxes, transportation, municipal services, and the environment.

Known for its exactness and thoroughness, the Quinnipiac poll was selected a "winner" by the New York Post for the most accurate prediction on the Schumer-D'Amato Senate race in 1998, and results are featured regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and on national network news broadcasts. Student interviewers use a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system to collect data from statewide and national residents. For a typical public opinion survey, a randomly selected sample of about 1,000 registered voters age 18 and over is interviewed over five or six days. The polls are conducted at the Polling Institute on New Road, adjacent to the main campus.

The Polling Institute can be contacted at 203-582-5201 or e-mailed at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0546,barrett,70016,5.html
The Slip-Them-a-Mickey Jug goes to Mickey Carroll, the polling giant who should asterisk his Quinnipiac University predictions with plus-or-minus-20-point margins of error. While others got it almost as wrong, Carroll's was in a chloral hydrate class by itself, going all the way up to a 38-point margin for Mayor Mike the day before the election, making them 50 percent off after missing by 25 percent in the primary.
(...)
Located in suburban Connecticut, Quinnipiac used only six Spanish-speaking students of the 155 paid to make calls and repeatedly missed Latino preferences, even under-weighting Hispanics in the sample at one point.

10 July 1988, New York Times, pg. CN1:
The figures were similar to earlier polls conducted by NBC News and the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute in Hamden.

14 June 1998, New York Times, "Colleges Seek Glory In the Polling Game" by Joseph Berger, pg. WK4:
Quinnipiac, Marist, Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., Virginia Commonwealth Univeristy in Richmond, Va., the University of Southern Maine in Portland and scores of others have discovered that polling people for views on political candidates, abortion or more whimsical topics is helping them stand out in the muddle of 5,500 college scrambling for applicants.
(...)
Lee M. Meringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, recalls that when he began polling in 1978 people would confuse his college with the Yankee ballplayer who holds the season record for home runs. "Now we don't have to spell Marist and we don't have to spell Poughkeepsie,"he said.

23 January 2000, New York Times, "Colleges Discover the Power That Comes From Polling" by Ivar Peterson, pg NJ8:
To be sure, no campus polling operation has earned a regional and even national reputation as fast as the Quinnipiac College Poll, which was begun in 1990. By focusing on regional political stories instead of Connecticut exclusively, the poll has captured the attention of editors and producers in the New York City area.