Pollster · Academic

East Carolina University Center for Survey Research

Also published as East Carolina University.

AAPOR Transparency Initiative since May 7, 20192Research draft
Polls since 2024
4
Latest poll ended
October 29, 2026
Record vs. results, relative
D+0.1

Polls from the VoteHub polling API, used under CC BY 4.0. Each result links to the pollster's or sponsor's own release. Imported once a day; a poll VoteHub later changes keeps its earlier version on record here.

§1About

Drafted by AI from the public sources cited. Each sentence links to its source.

The Center for Survey Research is a unit of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University that runs web and telephone surveys for public agencies, private clients and university researchers and publishes the ECU Poll.3,4 Its faculty and staff page names political science professor Peter L. Francia as director, and the university's archive records date the center to 1989.5,6 ECU News reported in 2018 that a $100,000 gift from alumni Wayne and Sherry Holloman would help create the ECU Poll.7 Its home page says it is recognized under the AAPOR Transparency Initiative and that individual surveys may be funded by outside clients.4

Kind
Academic3
Founded
19896

§2Who it works with

Why this matters: Owners, news partners and the firms behind a poll's interviews shape what gets asked, how, and what gets published.

Part of

  • East Carolina University. The center describes itself as housed in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University.3

Fieldwork or panel by

  • ReconMR (2026–now). The November 2026 ECU Poll release says ReconMR supplied the voter-file sample and ran the text-to-web portion of the survey.8
  • Bovitz (2026–now). The November 2026 ECU Poll release says an online panel provided by Bovitz supplemented the sample.8

Led by

  • Peter L. Francia. The faculty and staff page names Peter L. Francia as director of the center.5

§3Whom it works for

Why this matters: A firm that also works for one party's campaigns can still publish accurate polls, but readers deserve to know.

Says it does no work for parties or candidates. The November 2026 ECU Poll release describes the center as conducting nonpartisan public opinion polling.8

Of its 4 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor9.

§4Record against results

Why this matters: The one test that doesn't depend on other polls: how close a firm's final polls came to what voters did.

From FiveThirtyEight's final public data10,11: general-election polls between a Democrat and a Republican in the last three weeks before each election, compared with the certified result. FiveThirtyEight rated each name polls were published under separately. Across all 8,957 such polls, the average miss was D+0.7, so the relative figure takes out the misses every pollster shared that year.

Error is the poll's D−R margin minus the result's; D+ means it showed Democrats doing better than they did.
Published asPollsElectionsAverage missRelative to other pollsTypical size of miss538's last rating
East Carolina University Center for Survey Research112020–2022D+3.5D+0.14.0 pts2.6 of 3

ABC News closed FiveThirtyEight in March 2025; its data stops at the 2022 elections. 2026 results will be added once states certify them.

§52026 record against the count

Why this matters: How close this pollster's last 2026 polls came to how people voted, measured the way FiveThirtyEight measured earlier elections.

One poll of one race between a Democrat and a Republican, with field periods ending in the 21 days before November 3, 2026, compared with each race's count. Some of those races are still being counted, so these figures use the unofficial count and will change until states certify.

Average miss
R+10.6
Relative to other polls of the same races
R+2.7
Typical size of miss
10.6 pts

Error is the poll's D−R margin minus the count's, as shares of all votes in the race; D+ means it showed Democrats doing better than they did. From fewer than 5 polls, so read it as a few data points, not a pattern.

§6Its polls

The 4 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the fieldQuestionResultWithPaid for bySample
October 26–October 29, 2026U.S. Senate · 2026 North CarolinaRoy Cooper 54 · Michael Whatley 45 · Shannon Bray 1 · Michael Dublin 01,041 LV
October 19–October 24, 2026U.S. Senate · 2026 South CarolinaDarline Graham 51 · Annie Andrews 47 · Kasie Whitener 1 · Mark Hackett 1955 LV
September 30–October 3, 2026U.S. Senate · 2026 North CarolinaRoy Cooper 53 · Michael Whatley 46 · Shannon Bray 2 · Michael Dublin 0810 LV
August 31–September 3, 2026U.S. Senate · 2026 North CarolinaRoy Cooper 52 · Michael Whatley 44 · Shannon Bray 3 · Michael Dublin 1675 LV

§7What we looked for and didn't find

  • No founder of the center was found.
  • No standing news partner was found; its home page quotes news coverage but lists no formal partnership.
  • Only one recent release was read for fieldwork vendors, so the ReconMR and Bovitz arrangements are dated to 2026 only.
  • Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling or filing, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the center.
  • The Silver Bulletin ratings table and the VoteHub methodology pages could not be read, so aggregator checks rest on published text from aggregators and news searches.