Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion

§1About

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

The Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion (MCIPO) is a survey research institute at Muhlenberg College that has conducted survey research since 2001, according to the college's page marking its 25th anniversary in 2026.² A 2024 college article names political science professor Christopher Borick as its founder and director, and the 2026 anniversary page lists Borick as director and Lindsay Burt as managing director in one place and associate director in another.^2,3 Its October 2026 survey of Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District says the institute alone funded it, that Communication Concepts of Easton, Pennsylvania did the telephone interviewing under MCIPO protocols, and that Borick, listed with Lehigh University, and Burt designed the questionnaire.^4,5

Kind

Academic²

Founded

2001²

§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.

§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.

Doesn’t say whom it works for. The pages read do not say whether the institute works for candidates or parties; its 2024 and 2026 releases say they were funded by the institute, with The Morning Call in 2024.^5,7

Of its 1 poll listed since the 2024 election, VoteHub flags 0 as paid for by a Democratic-aligned sponsor and 0 by a Republican-aligned sponsor⁸.

§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 data^9,10: 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.

§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+6.2

Relative to other polls of the same races

Even

Typical size of miss

6.2 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

§7What we looked for and didn't find

• No start or end date for The Morning Call arrangement was found; the college's 2001 founding announcement, which search results say described it, now returns not found, and the October 2026 release names no media partner.
• The October 2026 release lists Borick with Lehigh University while the April 2026 anniversary page lists him as director; the pages read do not explain the change.
• No start date for its use of Communication Concepts was found beyond the 2024 and 2026 releases read.
• The college's current institute home page was not found (its old URLs return not found), so no mission or nonpartisanship statement was read.
• Searches found no AAPOR statement, court ruling, regulator action, aggregator statement about excluding or reweighting its polls, or retraction by the institute.