How we ask, count, and publish.

This page is a living document. Detailed methodology will be expanded as our first polls publish. For now, here are the principles we operate under.

Verification at collection, anonymity at publication

Every respondent is verified at sign-up — at minimum a phone number and a geographic consistency check, with stricter identity verification for high-stakes topics. But no individual response is ever published or sold. All consumption of AskedHere data happens through aggregated, privacy-preserving query results.

Topic categories and verification tiers

We classify each topic into one of seven categories — from casual opinion to binding civic decisions to credentialed specialist polls — and the verification posture scales with the stakes. The category and verification tier are visibly labelled on every published result.

K-anonymity floor

No published demographic cell or methodology disclosure may correspond to fewer than ten respondents. Smaller cells are suppressed or bucketed up. For sensitive topic categories we use a higher threshold.

Public scorecard

For predictive topics — elections, ballot measures, anything with a measurable outcome — we publish our prediction in advance and score it against the actual result on a public dashboard. We report calibration, not just win-rate. Misses are published as prominently as hits.

Layered transparency

At publication we disclose sample size, margin of error, weighting framework, demographic disclosure, and verification tier. We publish the exact targeting parameters and quota structure on a delay (or after the topic closes), to prevent gaming while preserving full transparency for academic and journalistic scrutiny.

Independent review

Question wording for high-stakes topics is reviewed by independent methodologists. We’re actively building partnerships with academic survey research centers to provide ongoing methodology oversight.

Found a flaw? Email methodology@askedhere.org. We’d rather hear it from you than read it later.