538/Ipsos Poll: September 12 Democratic Debate

Washington, DC - The third Democratic debate is complete and along with FiveThirtyEight, we are tracking the winners and losers. So far this debate looks to be good for Warren, and the second tier trio of Buttigieg, O’Rourke, and Booker. Klobuchar and Yang also seem to have made some new fans. Front-runners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders appear to not be moving while Julian Castro’s aggressive night might have cost him a bit. See all the analysis at our partner’s site with the topline data available on the download link.

Check back again Monday morning for our final update on public opinion after the debate.

Methodology

This 538 Debate/Ipsos Poll was conducted September 5th to 11th, 2019 by Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel® – a division of Ipsos. This poll is based on a nationally-representative probability sample of adults age 18 or older. Questions presented in this document were only asked of those who are likely to vote in the Democratic primary or caucus (n=4,320).

The post-debate 538 Debate/Ipsos Poll was conducted September 12th to 13th by Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel® – a division of Ipsos. Wave 1 of this poll was based on a nationally-representative probability sample of adults age 18 or older. Wave 2, what this topline reports, was administered to those who indicated in Wave 1 that they are likely to vote in their state's upcoming Democratic primary or caucus (n=2,202). 

The Wave 2 538 Debate/Ipsos Poll was conducted September 12th to 16th by Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel® – a division of Ipsos. Wave 1 of this poll was based on a nationally-representative probability sample of adults age 18 or older. Wave 2, what this topline reports, was administered to those who indicated in Wave 1 that they are likely to vote in their state's upcoming Democratic primary or caucus (n=3,473). 

The survey was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, which is the largest and most well-established online panel that is representative of the adult US population. Our recruitment process employs a scientifically developed addressed-based sampling methodology using the latest Delivery Sequence File of the USPS – a database with full coverage of all delivery points in the US. Households are randomly selected from all available households in the U.S. Persons in these households are invited to join and participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®. For those potential panel members who do not already have internet access, Ipsos provides a tablet and internet connection at no cost to the panel member. Those who join the panel and who are selected to participate in a survey are sent a unique password-protected log-in used to complete surveys online. As a result of our recruitment and sampling methods, samples from KnowledgePanel cover all households regardless of their phone or internet status and provide fully representative online samples to the research community.

The study was conducted in both English and Spanish. The data were weighted to adjust for gender by age, race, education, Census region, metropolitan status, and household income. The demographic benchmarks came from the 2018 March supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The weighting categories were as follows:

• Gender (Male/Female) by Age (18–29, 30–44, 45–59, and 60+)
• Race/Hispanic Ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other or 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic)
• Education (Less than High School, High School graduate, Some College, Bachelor and beyond)
• Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West)
• Metropolitan status (Metro, non-Metro)
• Household Income (Under $25,000, $25,000-$49,999, $50,000-$74,999, $75,000-$99,999, $100,000-$149,999, $150,000+)

The margin of sampling error among those likely to vote in the Democratic primary or caucus is plus or minus 1.68 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The margin of sampling error takes into account the design effect, which was 1.27. The margin of sampling error is higher and varies for results based on sub-samples. In our reporting of the findings, percentage points are rounded off to the nearest whole number. As a result, percentages in a given table column may total slightly higher or lower than 100%. In questions that permit multiple responses, columns may total substantially more than 100%, depending on the number of different responses offered by each respondent.

For more information on this news release, please contact: 

Chris Jackson
Vice President, U.S.
Ipsos Public Affairs
+1 202 420-2011
[email protected]

Mallory Newall
Director, US
Public Affairs
+1 202 420-2014
[email protected]

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