Mark Blumenthal will leave his post as senior editor at The Huffington Post to join SurveyMonkey as its first head of election polling.
via politico.com:
“The move is a sign that, amid a period of intense change in the way pollsters collect data, SurveyMonkey — which began as a simple online survey tool — is beefing up its political polling.
“SurveyMonkey has spent the past few years trying to leverage the millions of people who participate in surveys on its website — with clients from Little League coaches to large corporations — into the political space. At the same time, as traditional telephone polling has faltered following the growth of cellphones and Americans’ increasing unwillingness to participate in polls, online surveys are more accepted now than they have been in past election cycles.”
“I’ve known Mark for a long time, and the opportunity came up to have him spearhead our efforts,” said Jon Cohen, vice president of survey research at SurveyMonkey. “Mark has been the foremost chronicler over the past decade of the changes in our industry.”
“We’re investing in elections by leveraging the unique data sources that we have, and how we can parlay that into changing survey research more broadly,” Cohen said.
Read more via politico.com: SurveyMonkey swipes HuffPost’s Blumenthal to expand election polling