KFF/theGrio Survey of Black Voters

The KFF/theGrio Survey of Black Voters was conducted August 24-September 5, 2022, online and by telephone among a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults in English who identify as Black or African American and are registered to vote. The sample includes 800 Black adults registered to vote reached online through the SSRS Opinion Panel. An additional 100 respondents were reached online through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. To reach Black voters who do not use the Internet, another 100 interviews were conducted by calling back respondents who previously participated in an SSRS Omnibus poll and identified as Black and said they did not use the Internet. Sampling, data collection, weighting, and tabulation were managed by SSRS in close collaboration with KFF researchers. Teams from KFF and theGrio worked together to develop the questionnaire and analyze the data, and KFF financed the survey. Each organization is solely responsible for its content.

The SSRS Opinion Panel is a nationally representative probability-based panel where panel members are recruited randomly in one of two ways: (a) through invitations mailed to respondents randomly sampled from an Address-Based Sample (ABS) provided by Marketing Systems Groups (MSG) through the U.S. Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence (CDS); (b) from a dual-frame random digit dial (RDD) sample provided by MSG. The SSRS Omnibus survey is a nationally representative bilingual telephone survey designed to meet standards of quality associated with custom research studies. Sample for the SSRS Omnibus was obtained through Marketing System Groups (MSG). The Ipsos KnowledgePanel is a nationally representative probability-based panel where members are recruited randomly using ABS based on a stratified sample from the CDS. For the online panel components, invitations were first sent by email to panel members who previously identified as Black or African American, followed by up to three reminder emails. Respondents in the phone samples received a $10 incentive.

Both phone and web samples were asked to confirm their race and voter registration status in order to be eligible. Respondents were considered eligible if they identified as Black or African American even if they also identified as Hispanic or another race group.

The combined cell phone and panel samples were weighted to match the sample’s demographics to the national U.S. population of Black or African American adults (including Hispanic Black and multi-racial Black adults) who are registered to vote using data from the Census Bureau’s 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplement. Weighting parameters included sex, age, education, race/ethnicity, region, and education. The weights take into account differences in the probability of selection for each sample type (callback sample and panels). This includes adjustment for the sample design, within household probability of selection, and the design of the panel-recruitment procedure.

The online questionnaire included two questions designed to establish that respondents were paying attention. Surveys with a length less than one quarter of the mean length by mode were flagged and reviewed. Cases that failed two quality control questions (i.e. trap questions) were also flagged and reviewed. One case was removed due to a short survey length and failure of the two quality control questions.

The margin of sampling error including the design effect for the full sample is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Numbers of respondents and margins of sampling error for key subgroups are shown in the table below. Sample sizes and margins of sampling error for other subgroups may be higher and are available by request. Sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error and there may be other unmeasured error in this or any other public opinion poll. KFF public opinion and survey research is a charter member of the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.