Pollster · Academic

UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies

Also published as University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Research draft

Polls since 2024: 6
Latest poll ended: October 25, 2026

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 Institute of Governmental Studies is an organized research unit of the University of California, Berkeley; its history page says it began in 1919 as the Bureau of Public Administration and took its present name in 1962.^1,2 Its about page names G. Cristina Mora and Eric Schickler as co-directors, and the Berkeley IGS Poll page names Mark DiCamillo as poll director.^2,3 Its survey methods document describes the Berkeley IGS Poll as a regular non-partisan online survey of California registered voters, invited by email and text message and offered in English and Spanish.⁴

Kind: Academic¹
Founded: 1919¹

§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

University of California, Berkeley. Its history page calls it one of the oldest organized research units on the Berkeley campus, and its methods document calls it a component of the Berkeley campus.^1,4

News partners

Los Angeles Times. Its survey methods document names Los Angeles Times reporters and editors as the poll's media partner who help develop its questionnaires, its October 2025 release says the Times funded the poll in part, and its history page credits the co-directors with building partnerships with the Times.^1,4,5

Fieldwork or panel by

Political Data, Inc.. Its survey methods document says Political Data, Inc. supplies its samples of registered voters and helps distribute its text message invitations.^4,5

Led by

G. Cristina Mora. Its about page names G. Cristina Mora as a co-director.²
Eric Schickler. Its about page names Eric Schickler as a co-director.²
Mark DiCamillo. The Berkeley IGS Poll page and its releases name Mark DiCamillo as director of the poll.^3,5

Who paid for its polls

Sponsors named on its polls, most polls first⁶. A party-aligned flag is VoteHub's, per poll.
Sponsor	Polls	Between	Flagged party-aligned
Los Angeles Times	5	October 27, 2025 – October 25, 2026	No

§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. Its mission statement calls the institute interdisciplinary and non-partisan, and its methods document describes the poll as a non-partisan survey conducted on behalf of the University; the pages read do not say whether it works for candidates or parties.^1,4

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 sponsor⁶.

§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^7,8: 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 as	Polls	Elections	Average miss	Relative to other polls	Typical size of miss	538's last rating
University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies	3	2018–2022	D+1.2	D+2.8	5.1 pts	2.5 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+3.4
Relative to other polls of the same races: D+2.8
Typical size of miss: 3.4 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 6 polls of its we list, newest first.
In the field	Question	Result	Paid for by	Sample
October 19–October 25, 2026	Governor · 2026 California	Xavier Becerra 61 · Steve Hilton 34	Los Angeles Times	1,477 LV
September 15–September 20, 2026	Governor · 2026 California	Xavier Becerra 58 · Steve Hilton 33	Los Angeles Times	4,512 LV
August 3–August 9, 2026	Governor · 2026 California	Xavier Becerra 55 · Steve Hilton 37	Los Angeles Times	2,310 LV
October 20–October 27, 2025	proposition 50 · 2025 California	Yes 54 · No 33	Los Angeles Times	8,141 RV
October 20–October 27, 2025	proposition 50 · 2025 California	Yes 60 · No 38	Los Angeles Times	4,946 LV
August 11–August 17, 2025	proposition 50 · 2025 California	Yes 55 · No 44		4,950 RV

§7What we looked for and didn't find

No start date was found for the Los Angeles Times partnership; the poll page lists Times-linked releases from 2025.
The Los Angeles Times articles among its sample releases could not be fetched.
Its founding year is that of its predecessor, the Bureau of Public Administration.
How the IGS Poll relates to the Field Poll, whose archived data the poll page also offers, was not described in the pages read.
On 2026-11-06 AAPOR's statements list (five pages), FiftyPlusOne's August 2026 notice suspending pollsters and web searches for court cases, regulator actions, aggregator statements and retractions or corrections naming the Berkeley IGS Poll found none; its August 5, 2020 coronavirus release (#2020-12) is posted as amended with no note saying what changed, so it is listed under pointers rather than recorded as a correction.