What is "newspoll"

Newspoll is an Australian opinion polling brand, published by The Australian and administered by Galaxy Research. Newspoll has a long tradition of accuracy, and moved to a new methodology of online and automated telephone interviews in 2015.1. In the first major test of this methodology, Newspoll conducted by Galaxy Research was the most accurate national published poll at the 2016 Australian Federal Election 2

Until May 2015, Newspoll was a market research and polling company, part owned by News Corp Australia. Its founding Managing Director was Solomon Lebovic who led the company from 1985 to 2005. Martin O'Shannessy was CEO since late 2005 until the dissolution of Cudex, the joint venture company running Newspoll. While the former Newspoll was well known for political polling, over 90% of its activities were in commercial market research.

Newspoll's surveys of voting intention are published exclusively in The Australian. In addition, many organisations from both sides of the political divide and within the business community commissioned public opinion polling from the former Newspoll. Newspoll opinion polls were instrumental in the GetUp! campaign to free David Hicks and also played an important role in industry campaigns to defeat the Mining Tax.

Newspoll was established in 1985 as a joint venture between News Limited and Yann Campbell Hoare Wheeler, which later was purchased by Millward Brown during the 1990s leading to the current ownership structure. In 2015 this company was wound up with The Australian announcing that henceforth Newspoll would become a polling brand administered by Galaxy.

The transfer of operation to Galaxy came with a significant change in polling methods. Although the wording of Newspoll questions remained the same, Galaxy conducts Newspoll using a mix of automated robodial polling to landlines and online polling. The original Newspoll had conducted polling by live landline telephone interviews only.