The July, 2008 UT-Austin Texas Politics Poll was designed by researchers at UT-Austin and conducted by YouGovPolimetrix, a firm with demonstrated success in internet polling. YouGovPolimetrix accomplishes internet polling through a unique sampling procedure known as "matched random sampling." The firm begins with two lists: (1) a list of all consumers in Texas (covering approximately 95 percent of the adult population), and (2) a list of people who have agreed to take YouGovPolimetrix's surveys. For each list, Polimetrix has an extensive set of demographics.

The sampling procedure then progresses in two stages. First, a random sample of consumers is drawn. For each person drawn from this sample a list of key demographics is recorded. In essence, each individual drawn is represented as a cluster of demographic characteristics, including age, income, education, race, gender, longitude and latitude, etc. Second, YouGovPolimetrix uses a matching algorithm to find the PollingPoint panelist who is the closest match to the person drawn off the consumer file. In this way an entire matched random sample is constructed for all people in the sample.

The current poll of 800 adult Texans has a margin of error of +/- 3.46 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The poll includes interviews with 677 registered voters, with an attendant margin of error of +/- 3.77 percentage points. Response rates are almost 100% given the matching methodology. The YouGovPolimetrix pool includes people who are much less likely to have access to the Internet or a personal computer. They have been especially assiduous at enlisting people with lower incomes and ethnic and racial minorities, part of an attempt to bolster the representativeness of their samples.The poll was administered by YouGov/Polimetrix. Polimetrix interviewed 899 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 800 to produce the final data set. The respondents were matched on gender, age, race, education, party identification and political interest. YouGov/Polimetrix then weighted the matched set of survey respondents to known marginals for the general population of Texas from the 2006 American Community Survey. Those marginals are:

Age:

18-34: 33.45%

35-54: 39.08%

55+: 27.53%

Gender:

Male: 48.97%

Female: 51.03%

Race:

White/Other: 57.63%

Black: 10.94%

Hispanic: 31.43%

Education:

HS or less: 49.23%

Some College: 28.49%

College Graduate: 15.23%

Post-graduate: 7.50%