HuffPost Pollster API Provides Access to Huge Database of Political Poll Data

Janet Wagner, August 1st, 2012

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Earlier this month, the Huffington Post announced the release of the HuffPost Pollster API, which provides developers programmatic access to the results of thousands of political opinion polls gathered and published by the Huffington Post.

Huffington Post Charts screenshot taken on 7/24/12

The HuffPost Pollster API data dates back to 2004, and includes numbers from more than 13,000 polls that have been organized by subject and geography. The data has also been organized into more than 200 charts. The type of data available is based on more than 215,000 responses to poll questions on subjects such as:

• Impressions about the direction of the country
• Specific policy issues
• Horse race questions about upcoming elections
• Job approval ratings
• Party identification

The HuffPost Pollster API is currently in Beta and the data is provided in JSON and XML response formats. The Official HuffPost Pollster API page lists three methods of calling API data:

• Charts – returns a list of the charts available through the Pollster API
• Chart – returns information about a particular chart, including historical estimates
• Polls – returns a list of all polls, filtered by geography, chart or topic

For those who are not programmers or are less tech savvy, the Huffington post will be making the data available via Atom feeds and Excel-ready CSVs in the very near future.