Iona College has launched a polling center that seeks to fill the gap in assessing the opinions and concerns of Westchester voters.

Director of Honors Jeanne Zaino and Dean of Arts and Science Brian Nickerson were actively involved in the process of launching th polling center. They believe that the center will help “fill the gap” in Westchester polling.

“Westchester and the surrounding region (NY Metro, Hudson Valley and 1-95 corridor) are often ignored or under-examined by other polling organizations and media outlets,” Nickerson said.

The new polling center seeks to change this underrepresentation in Westchester polling. The idea to launch a polling center had been talked about for years.

Iona has previously been involved in polling, but has not conducted polls in several years, according to Zaino. During this time, there were talks of reviving it.

Luck and good timing are two of the contributing reasons that Iona was able to launch the polling center this year. “We were lucky because several elements fell into place,” Zaino said. She cites the hard work of Nickerson as one of them. And both Zaino and Nickerson point to joining with media partner RNNTV and  business group Westchester County Association as critical to the creation of the polling center. Iona was approached by RNNTV to conduct polls on regional races, and Zaino and Nickerson seized the opportunity.

Zaino and Nickerson co-coordinated the launch effort on the technical side and the Advancement team publicized the launch. Mathematics Associate Professor Greg Selitto was involved in the data analysis part of the process.

The way the polling works is that registered voters are polled in a given district using an automated platform. The platform allows the pollsters to call up to 10,000 phone numbers in one evening.

Zaino believes that this polling methodology is another aspect of the polling center that allows it to fill a necessary gap. “The polling methodology we are using allows us to poll quickly and efficiently, while maintaining the utmost accuracy. This is something we are excited about because it potentially allows us to poll on issues, such as reaction to a crisis, that other pollsters in our area are unable to examine immediately,” she said.

The polling center was launched at a crucial time, since the hotly contested midterm elections are less than a month away. There are at least eight more polls that are going to be conducted this election season.

“We have put out press releases with key information on each race we have polled already and will continue to do so as we get closer to election day this year,” Nickerson said.

The long-term plan for the polling center is to allow it to expand as much as possible. The immediate plans are to continue polling up until the midterm elections and then de-brief. “The polling we have been doing and will continue to do right up to and post-election day this year is helpful in determining our needs and it has given us a lot of ideas about what we might do forward,” Zaino said. She also stated that the polling center could expand to include topics that are not just political, but could be used any time there is an interest in measuring public attitude and opinion.

Zaino is also interested in developing student involvement in the polling process. She stated that working with polling as an undergraduate had a huge impact on her life and that it would give students great skills as they move into either the workforce or graduate school.