For three days running this week, The News & Observer ran stories about the latest Elon University poll. As did other newspapers and TV stations across the state.

The poll got widespread coverage because the issues were timely: the federal stimulus bill, Obama’s popularity, ratings of Congress and state issues including taxes, budget cuts, smoking ban, annexation and using cell phones while driving.

This happens every few months. The poll has become to Elon, a private university in Alamance County, what national championship football teams were to Appalachian State: a trademark source of recognition and publicity.

Last week, I went to Elon to check out the poll.

Unlike most university-affiliated polls across the country, the Elon poll is done by the students. They do the calling. They work on the questions. They help compile results. And they learn a lot.

Every now and then, some know-it-all in Raleigh dismisses the Elon poll this way: They don’t screen for voters; they poll every adult who answers the phone.

That’s right, says Hunter Bacot, the Elon political science professor who directs the poll. After all, voters aren’t the only people with opinions. Elon gives everybody a voice.

Plus, the poll is independent. It does not do contract work. And Bacot goes to great pains to show the students how the wording of questions – and the order in which they are asked – can bias a poll.

For five days last week – starting Sunday afternoon and going through Thursday night – Bacot and Mileah Kromer, assistant poll director, gathered about 40 Elon students in a state-of-the-art call center on campus.

Most of the students had never called before. Some were political science majors who were required to be there. Others were there because they get paid.

Bacot gave the first-time callers a short tutorial: how the computerized calling program works, how to follow the poll’s script on their terminals and – most important – how to engage people on the phone. Show some energy and enthusiasm, he told the students. Most of all, let them know you’re a student here in North Carolina – not a distant telemarketer.

As the night went on, you could see the students getting more and more comfortable cold-calling people. By the time the polling stopped around 9 p.m., some students were still engaged in long conversations with people across the state.

That night, the students reached 149 people. Over the five days, they interviewed 758. The results – and more information on the poll – can be found at http://www.elon.edu/e-web/elonpoll.

Those 758 North Carolinians got a chance to express their opinions. Media outlets all over the state got a chance to report on their opinions. Elon got some recognition. And the students got some insight into how people think about issues.

That’s a winner all around.

I have a personal interest to declare. My son James, a sophomore political-science major at Elon, is one of the poll interns. He helps put together the questionnaires and oversee the calling. I’m proud of him, and I’m thankful to Elon and to the poll’s directors for what he is learning about politics and people.

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