Highlights

The Lenfest Institute engaged SSRS to conduct the Every Voice, Every Vote Survey ahead of the 2023 Philadelphia Mayoral and City Council elections. The goal of the survey was to understand how community groups and media organizations can engage Philadelphia’s diverse communities and neighborhoods in the electoral process.

Challenge

The Lenfest Institute was interested in obtaining a sample that ensures sufficient sample sizes within key Philadelphia neighborhoods. Additionally, the client was interested in two key subgroups: Black and Hispanic Philadelphians. In order to achieve a sufficient sample size, SSRS oversampled Black and Hispanic Philadelphians to ensure that the client would be able to conduct analyses of these subgroups.

Approach

SSRS was able to achieve the goals for this study through a stratified ABS sample that divided Philadelphia County into seven neighborhoods and race density strata based on the incidence of Black and Hispanic residents at the block level. Additionally, we used surname flags to target Black and Hispanic respondents. Additionally, SSRS conducted focus groups prior to developing the questionnaire in order to ensure that the questionnaire covered key issues of interest. Findings from the focus groups informed the questionnaire design process.

Results

SSRS interviewed 1,247 Philadelphia residents. Following data delivery, SSRS held a seminar for the media partners of Lenfest to review the methodology of the survey, how to read the data, and field any questions they had on how to report the findings. The data from this study showed that over half of respondents (54%) rate Philadelphia as an excellent or good place to live. The study also showed that a majority of Philadelphians (89%) considered that addressing crime should be a top priority for elected officials. Less than one-third believed that increasing funding to the police would be an extremely important measure to decrease crime, while almost two-thirds said that passing stricter gun laws would be an extremely important way to decrease crime.