Abstract:

The limitations of face-to-face and telephone surveys have led many polling firms to replace them with digital surveys which, despite having undeniable advantages, are still not sufficient to obtain truly representative samples of the population. Cifras y Conceptos, the Colombian polling firm I manage, launched two innovative products that helped voters and politicians to better understand their political preferences and make informed decisions. In addition to promoting political participation both products combined a probabilistic survey with a digital survey, allowing us to compare the answers from the general population and the respondents of the digital one. We found that the second group tend to hold more radical views than the first one, which reaffirms the

dangers of generalising the perceptions of social network and internet users. The outstanding results obtained from these products show the advantages of combining different forms of data collection and analysis to obtain truly representative samples of the population and make contact with hard-to-reach niches. That is the path that Cifras y Conceptos would like to follow in the coming years.