Panel methodology

How YouGov trackers work

The data displayed in these graphs come from daily or weekly tracking surveys conducted by YouGov.

For each survey, a representative sample of respondents — typically at least 1,500 — is selected from YouGov’s U.S. research panel. Panelists are invited to each survey based upon their age, gender, race, and education, in proportion to their frequency to the frequency of adult citizens in the most recent American Community Survey.

Responding panelists are then weighted according to their demographics, voter registration status, and 2020 Presidential vote. The margin of error for adults in each survey is approximately 3% and for registered voters is approximately 3%. Trend lines are computed using a LOESS smoother (Cleveland and Devlin, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1988) to reduce random fluctuations in the data due to sampling variability.

How YouGov Daily Questions work

Each week, YouGov asks topical questions to get the public’s first judgement on the biggest issues of the day. These launch each weekday morning, and the results are released by the next day.

The final results are published into the survey results archive each weekday and also posted from YouGov's U.S. X account. These results are weighted to be representative of the U.S. population by:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Race
  • Education
  • Political party affiliation

For the final nationally representative results, we include only responses from people who answered the questions as part of a traditional YouGov survey. The responses then are weighted to be representative of the full population — an adjustment that we do to ensure that the results are an accurate depiction of the views of all U.S. adults. Our testing has shown that this methodology produces the most accurate results that are in line with standard YouGov polling.

It’s possible to respond to these questions in multiple places, including the YouGov website and app. Once you have responded you can also view the live, unweighted results collected so far. However, numbers in the live results are just an early indication, and it’s important to be cautious with them. They are not weighted. Also, because anybody can take part in the poll through the YouGov website or app — even if they are not regular panelists — people with a particular interest in a topic may be more likely to take part, which could skew the live results.