Blumenthal Joins as Head of Election Polling Ahead of 2016 Presidential Elections
SurveyMonkey®, the world’s leading online survey platform, today announced Mark Blumenthal, co-founder of Pollster.com, will be joining as the company’s Head of Election Polling. Based in Washington, D.C., Blumenthal will work on advancing SurveyMonkey’s industry best practices for online research.
“The polling industry is at a moment of reinvention, and I’m thrilled to get back on the frontlines,” said Blumenthal. “The talented team at SurveyMonkey is leading the field in innovation, marrying traditional scientific research practices with new methodologies. I’m looking forward to taking what we learn from our election work and creating best practices for all SurveyMonkey customers.”
Blumenthal joins the company’s survey research team, including Jon Cohen, former lead pollster at The Washington Post and VP of Research at Pew Research. Blumenthal’s decades of polling expertise will advance key learnings on how to deliver quality public opinion data that takes advantage of SurveyMonkey’s technology, scale, and ability to capture real-time feedback.
Blumenthal is one of the nation’s foremost experts in electoral polling and is the recipient of the Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Awardfrom the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Most recently, Blumenthal served as the Senior Polling Editor at The Huffington Post and was responsible for the outlet’s Pollster section, where thousands of election polls are analyzed and shared.
Prior to joining The Huffington Post, Blumenthal co-founded Pollster.com, a nationally recognized website publishing aggregated poll results in interactive charts and graphs. Blumenthal’s work established Pollster.com as the leader in pre-election polling results attracting over 27 million visitors and 86 million page views before its acquisition by The Huffington Post in 2010.
“As SurveyMonkey transforms the way the world conducts polls, we’re thrilled to have Mark lead our quickly expanding efforts to solve some of the toughest problems around election polling,” said Cohen, VP of Survey Research at SurveyMonkey. “For more than a decade, Mark has been one of the most incisive chroniclers of the dramatic changes facing our industry, and he’s a master at breaking down complex methodology. He is exactly the right person for the job as we develop, perfect, and explain new techniques for our customers.”
About SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading online survey platform, with more than 3 million survey responses every day. SurveyMonkey has revolutionized the way people give and take feedback, making it accessible, easy and affordable for everyone. The company was founded in 1999 with a focus on helping people make better decisions, and has built technology based on over 15 years of experience in survey methodology and web development. Customers include 99 percent of the Fortune 500, academic institutions, organizations and neighborhood soccer leagues everywhere. The company has over 650 employees globally, with headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit www.surveymonkey.com.
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