Uncovering qualitative insights at scale within Political Polls

Meet Michael

Michael (Mike) Conte is the Director of Client Services at the Marist Poll, which is housed within Marist Institute for Public Opinion (MIPO). In this role, he leads the poll's survey solutions team and collaborates closely with the heads of the survey center and data science on data collection and analysis operations. Conte assists individuals and organizations in identifying optimal methodologies for their research needs and oversees client projects from questionnaire development to delivery.

Challenge

The Marist Poll has long been recognized for its rigor in quantitative survey research - delivering clear-cut answers to questions like presidential approval ratings or public opinion on policy issues. However, as client needs evolved and the media landscape demanded richer context behind the numbers, Marist saw a growing gap.

Michael Conte, Director of Client Services, was tasked with modernizing their research offerings. The core challenge? How to enhance traditional quantitative surveys with deeper, qualitative insight - without losing scale, speed, or reliability.

Marist needed a scalable way to gather open-ended responses that mimicked the depth of focus groups - allowing respondents not just to vote “approve” or “disapprove,” but to explain the “why” behind their opinion. This qualitative layer would give media partners and clients more compelling narratives and nuanced data to work with—something traditional multiple-choice surveys simply couldn’t provide.

Solution

To bring richer context into their surveys without overhauling their existing infrastructure, Marist integrated Voiceform directly into their quantitative survey platform. This allowed them to embed audio-recorded, open-ended questions alongside their traditional multiple-choice formats — creating a seamless hybrid survey experience.

The implementation was simple yet powerful: Voiceform was used specifically for the open-ended follow-up questions that their core platform couldn’t support. Respondents could answer these questions using voice, providing more natural, in-their-own-words insights about why they held certain opinions — especially useful for politically sensitive or emotionally charged topics.

Each voice response was automatically captured as an MP3 file, with a corresponding transcript generated and delivered in the final CSV export. This made it easy to merge qualitative responses with the rest of the structured survey data. By connecting spoken insights to the quantitative variables already being collected, Marist was able to offer a significantly more nuanced analysis to their clients and media partners — without disrupting their existing survey operations or requiring manual post-processing.

This integration didn’t just add a new feature — it unlocked an entirely new layer of insight, enabling Marist to elevate the storytelling and emotional resonance of their research in a way that aligned perfectly with their mission of delivering high-integrity, impactful public opinion data.

Results:

By integrating Voiceform into their survey workflow, Marist Poll achieved several high-impact outcomes that elevated the value of their research and differentiated their offering in the market:

• Added Qualitative Depth to Quantitative Surveys
  Marist successfully introduced voice-recorded open-ended questions into surveys that were traditionally closed-ended and numeric. This gave respondents space to explain their answers, delivering richer insights that helped decode approval ratings, political sentiment, and public opinion with more context.
  
  
• Enhanced Deliverables for Clients and Media Partners
  Voiceform’s transcription and audio exports made it easy to pair spoken responses with structured survey data. This will enable Marist to provide more comprehensive reports — including direct quotes and thematic summaries — giving stakeholders actionable context that previously wasn’t possible with standard tools.
  
  
• Expanded Research Offerings Without Disrupting Workflow
  Without replacing or overhauling their core survey platform, Marist was able to enhance it. The lightweight Voiceform integration slotted in seamlessly, requiring no manual transcription or data merging — yet delivering a dramatically upgraded end product.
  
  
• Improved Message Testing and Media Insight Generation
  For clients exploring voter messaging, policy reactions, or brand sentiment, Marist can now show not just the “what” (e.g., 62% disapprove) but also the “why” — helping clients understand motivations, tone, and underlying concerns in the respondent’s own words.
  
  
• Differentiated Marist in a Competitive Research Landscape
  While many polling organizations stick to traditional, closed-ended formats, Marist now has the ability to offer a hybrid model: quantitative rigor with qualitative storytelling. This positioned the organization as forward-thinking and responsive to evolving client expectations for deeper insights.

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