1. Leadership

2. Services

3. 2017 Calgary Mayoral Election Poll

4. References

Mainstreet Research is a Canadian market research and polling firm with headquarters in Toronto, and offices in Montreal and Calgary.

Founded as Mainstreet Technologies in January 2010, the firm was initially in the business of finding technological solutions for its clients and providing data and data integration to Canadian political candidates and parties. It was through this work that the Mainstreet re-positioned its service based on the use of technology tools such as Voice Over Internet Protocols (VoIP), SMS (short messaging service aka text) and GIS (geographic information services) for the business of public opinion polling. In March 2015, Mainstreet Technologies was renamed Mainstreet Research.

Leadership

The company is headed by Quito Maggi, son of Argentine immigrants, who came to Canada in 1968. He is a graduate of Carleton University and has spent much of his 20-year career in politics and public policy working with various candidates at the municipal, provincial and federal level.

Services

Mainstreet Research currently partners with Postmedia in an ongoing series of polls; the polls conducted include projects in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.^[1] There are also polling projects done on a national basis and in the City of Toronto at a municipal level. The firm is also involved in a "public polling fund", allocating a set amount of revenue towards public projects. Mainstreet associates can access the fund to commission and pay for original research, which is done on a monthly basis for polls in Toronto, Alberta and Ontario.

The company has an online form for suggestions for public polls on its website.

Mainstreet Research is frequently cited by Canadian media outlets. Their polling as been referenced by iPolitics,^[2] Global News,^[3] CBC,^[4] CTV,^[5] and Reuters.^[6]

2017 Calgary Mayoral Election Poll

In the 2017 election for Mayor of Calgary, Mainstreet's final poll suggested that challenger Bill Smith would defeat incumbent Naheed Nenshi by an 11 point spread. Instead, Nenshi won by 7 points, having underestimated Nenshi’s vote by 12% and overestimated Smith's by 8%, for a total deviation of over 20%.^[7] In a series of tweets on the night of the election, Mainstreet leader Quito Maggi was frank in expressing his shock at the result and apologizing for the magnitude of the error, saying that his firm "fucked up" and that while "all the polls were awful in the end...ours worst of all. We're going to look at our entire process & figure out why."^[8] Maggi subsequently wrote a detailed blog post outlining how their polling and analysis methods had evolved over time and the steps they would take to understand and learn from the weaknesses underlying the poll's failure.^[7] In an interview, Maggi speculated that possible contributors included underrepresentation of minorities in Calgary as a result of polling exclusively in English when substantial numbers of Calgarians speak another language as their mother tongue, and having relied on only 40% of respondents via cellphone, when a better sample would have been 60-70 percent.^[9]

References

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