About this Poll
Interviewing for The Roanoke College Poll was conducted by The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia between May 3 and May 16, 2020. A total of 603 Virginia residents were interviewed. For election-related questions, respondents were screened to include only those 563 Virginians who are registered voters or are likely to register prior to the November election and are likely to vote in November. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.

The landline sample consisted of random-digit numbers generated in proportion to the Virginia population so that all residential telephone numbers, including unlisted numbers, had a known chance of inclusion. Cellphone samples were purchased from Marketing Systems Group. Cellphones comprised 57 percent of the completed interviews.

Questions answered by the entire sample of 603 respondents are subject to a sampling error of plus or minus approximately 4.0 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence. This means that in 95 out of 100 samples like the one used here, the results obtained should be no more than 4.0 percentage points above or below the figure that would be obtained by interviewing all Virginians who have a home telephone or a cellphone. The potential voter sample of 563 has a margin of error of +4.1 percent. Where the results of subgroups are reported, the sampling error is higher.

Quotas were used to ensure that different regions of the Commonwealth were proportionately represented. The data were statistically weighted for gender, race, and age. Weighting was done to match the 2016 Presidential election exit poll in Virginia. The margin of error was not adjusted for design effects due to weighting.