The October 2008 UT-Austin Texas Politics Poll was designed by researchers at UT-Austin and conducted by YouGov/Polimetrix, a firm with demonstrated success in internet polling. YouGov/Polimetrix accomplishes internet polling through a unique sampling procedure known as "matched random sampling." The firm begins with two lists: (1) a list of all adult "consumers" in Texas (covering approximately 95 percent of the adult population), and (2) a list of people who have agreed to take YouGov/Polimetrix'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, YouGov/Polimetrix 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 "drawn" sample.

The October 2008 poll consists of 613 adult Texans, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.98 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The poll includes interviews with 550 registered voters, with an attendant margin of error of +/- 4.20 percentage points. Response rates are almost 100% given the matching methodology. The YouGov/Polimetrix pool includes people who are much less likely to have access to the Internet or a personal computer. YouGov/Polimetrix has been especially assiduous at enlisting ethnic and racial minorities, as well as people who are less affluent, as part of their attempt to ensure 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 613 to produce the final data set. The respondents were matched on (among other items) 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 Grad.: 15.23%

Post-graduate: 7.50%