Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research

§1About

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

The Institute for Public Policy and Social Research is a Michigan State University unit that, according to its about page, does public policy research, survey research and policy education and training, and runs the Office for Survey Research and the State of the State Survey.² Its director page says political science professor Matt Grossmann has led its work since 2016.³ MSU's archives say the institute was formed around 1990 from the Social Science Research Bureau within the College of Social Science, and that college lists it among its centers and institutes.^4,5 Its State of the State Survey page says MSU began the survey in October 1994 and that the Office for Survey Research administers it as an online survey of Michigan adults.⁶

Kind

Academic²

§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.

Published with

Names its polls have been published under, alongside other pollsters or news outlets.

• Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research/YouGov: YouGov · 6 polls listed

§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 institute's about page says the State of the State Survey is designed to give policy leaders nonpartisan information; the pages read do not say whether the institute works for candidates or parties.²

Of its 6 polls listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁹.

§4How its numbers compare with other polls

Why this matters: A firm whose polls run steadily to one side of everyone else's is worth reading alongside others.

Each of its polls since the 2024 election is compared with other pollsters' polls of the same question whose field period ended within 14 days, each other pollster counted once⁹. The figure is the average gap, with a 95% margin. This compares it with other polls, not with the truth: the others can be the ones that are off.

Party margin

D+2.5 (±2.3) across 6 polls of the generic ballot and 2026 races, in 2 contests.

D+ means its polls showed Democrats doing better than other polls did; R+, Republicans. A figure from fewer than 5 polls isn't shown.

§5Record 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 data^10,11: 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.

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

§6Its polls

§7What we looked for and didn't find

• No exact founding date was found; MSU's archives say only that the institute was formed around 1990, so founded is left empty.
• No standing news partner or outside sponsor was named in the releases read, and neither 2026 release says who funded the survey.
• No start date was found for the survey's use of YouGov's panel.
• A web search for AAPOR statements, retractions, corrections or errors involving the survey found none, and AAPOR's statements list (five pages, read on 2026-11-06) names none; targeted searches for court cases, regulator actions and aggregator statements could not be run after the session's web search budget ran out.