Full Methodology
This poll of 1,625 voters nationwide was conducted in English and Spanish by live operators on cellular and landline telephones and online via text message from Jan. 12 to 17, 2026. The Times/Siena Poll is a collaboration between The New York Times and Siena Research Institute, now part of ReconMR.
The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points among registered voters.
Sample
The survey is a response rate-adjusted stratified sample of registered voters taken from the voter file maintained by L2, a nonpartisan voter-file vendor, and supplemented with additional voter-file-matched cellular telephone numbers from Marketing Systems Group. The sample was selected by The New York Times in multiple steps to account for differential telephone coverage, nonresponse and significant variation in the productivity of telephone numbers by state.
To adjust for noncoverage bias, the L2 voter file was stratified by statehouse district, party, race, gender, marital status, household size, turnout history, age and homeownership. The proportion of registrants with a telephone number and the mean expected response rate were calculated for each stratum. The mean expected response rate was based on a model of unit nonresponse in prior Times/Siena surveys. The initial selection weight was equal to the reciprocal of a stratum’s mean telephone coverage and modeled response rate. For respondents with multiple telephone numbers on the L2 file, or with differing numbers from L2 and Marketing Systems Group, the number with the highest modeled response rate was selected.
Fielding
The sample was split into two halves. The first half of the sample was contacted on their phone by a live interviewer and did not receive a text message. A portion of phone-only respondents, 23 percent, were offered a $20 gift card if they completed the interview. The second half of the sample was sent a text message containing an invitation to participate in an online survey, including an offer for the respondent to receive a $20 gift card if they completed the interview. Those who did not initially complete the survey online received follow-up text message reminders and were contacted on their cellphone by a live interviewer.
Overall, 811 of the respondents who took the survey were first contacted via text message, including 467 who started the survey online; 814 respondents did not receive a text message and were contacted only by live operators. Overall, 98 percent of respondents were reached on cellular telephones.
Each half of the sample was stratified according to political party, race and region and fielded separately. Marketing Systems Group screened the sample to ensure that the cellular telephone numbers were active. The Siena Research Institute at Siena University fielded the poll, with additional fieldwork by ReconMR.
The questions were translated into Spanish by ReconMR. Bilingual interviewers began the interview in English and were instructed to follow the lead of the respondent in determining whether to conduct the survey in English or Spanish. Monolingual Spanish-speaking respondents who were initially contacted by English-speaking interviewers were recontacted by Spanish-speaking interviewers. Overall, 14 percent of interviews (17 percent of the weighted sample) among self-reported Hispanics were conducted in Spanish.
An interview was determined to be complete for the purposes of inclusion in the questions about whom the respondent would vote for if the respondent did not drop out of the survey after being asked the two self-reported variables used in weighting — age and education — and answered at least one of the questions about age, education or 2026 general election vote intent.
Weighting
The two halves of the survey were weighted separately by The Times using the survey package in R in multiple steps.
First, the sample was adjusted for unequal probability of selection by stratum.
Second, the poll was weighted to match voter-file-based parameters for the characteristics of registered voters.
The following targets were used:
- Party registration (L2 data)
- Race (L2 model of race)
- Age (self-reported age, or voter file age if the respondent refused) by gender (L2 data)
- Education (four categories of self-reported education level, weighted to match NYT-based targets derived from Times/Siena polls, census data and the L2 voter file)
- White/nonwhite race by college or noncollege educational attainment (L2 model of race weighted to match NYT-based targets for self-reported education)
- Marital status (L2 model)
- Homeownership (L2 model)
- Turnout history (NYT classifications based on L2 data)
- Metropolitan status (NYT classifications based on the 2013 NCHS urban-rural classification scheme for counties)
- National region (Census Bureau classifications, with D.C., Delaware and Maryland reclassified as Northeast)
The text half of the sample was further weighted by respondents’ recalled 2024 vote and party identification with leaners, with the targets based on the results of the phone-only half of the poll.
Finally, the sample of respondents who completed all questions in the survey was weighted identically as well as to the result for the 2026 general election horse-race question (including voters leaning a certain way) on the full sample.
The margin of error accounts for the survey’s design effect, a measure of the loss of statistical power due to survey design and weighting.
The design effect for the full sample is 1.35.
For the sample of completed interviews the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.3 points, including a design effect of 1.47.
From 2016 to 2022, the Times/Siena Poll’s error at the 95th percentile has been plus or minus 5.1 percentage points in surveys taken over the final three weeks before an election. Real-world error includes sources of error beyond sampling error, such as nonresponse bias, coverage error, late shifts among undecided voters and error in estimating the composition of the electorate.
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