Wilke brings a decade of methodological innovation to BlueLabs’ polling and focus group practice

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — BlueLabs, a leading analytics firm specializing in polling, message testing, and qualitative research, today announced the promotion of Joy Wilke to Vice President of Polling. In her new role, Wilke will lead BlueLabs‘ polling and survey research practice as companies and organizations rethink how they measure public opinion in a changing landscape.

“Polling is harder than ever. Response rates are at an all-time low, and AI-driven bots are flooding online panels,” said Joy Wilke. “I’m honored to lead a team that is as curious, smart, and kind as they are rigorous, and together we are building the multimodal approaches that engage hard-to-reach respondents and mitigate fraud. This is the most interesting work of my career and I can’t wait for what’s next.”

Joy has built the firm’s survey research practice into an industry-recognized leader in multimodal polling and methodological innovation. Her recent research on reaching the dynamic electorate, presented at this year’s American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) conference, revealed how infrequent voters move in and out of the electorate between cycles and why conventional polling methods often fail to reach them.

“Joy is an exceptional leader and brilliant statistician who has dedicated her career to pushing the survey research field forward,” said BlueLabs co-founder Elan Kriegel. “We are extremely lucky and thrilled to have her join our leadership team.”

A survey researcher and methodologist for more than a decade, Wilke has worked on hundreds of surveys and focus groups reaching millions of people around the world. She joined BlueLabs in 2022, having previously led polling work at a prominent research firm, served at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2018 cycle, and began her career at the Gallup Organization. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied the effects of media and campaigns on public opinion, and an M.S. in Survey Methodology from the University of Michigan.

“We’re moving to a world where outcomes are increasingly decided by the people who are hardest to reach and who are most skeptical of the content they’re seeing,” said BlueLabs partner Harrison Kreisberg. “The winners will be those who best understand these audiences so they can break through with new and relevant messages.”

In addition to the firm’s polling operation, Wilke leads BlueLabs’ focus group practice, bringing a qualitative lens to the firm’s survey work and helping organizations understand not just what audiences think, but why.

About BlueLabs:
Founded in 2013, BlueLabs is a research and data analytics firm that helps companies and organizations understand the people they’re trying to reach. Through polling, message testing, and qualitative research, BlueLabs turns rigorous data into strategy that drives measurable results. Learn more at BlueLabs.com.

Q&A: AI, Hard-To-Reach Audiences, and the Future of Survey Research

Q: What should organizations look for in a research partner?
A: First, multimodal fielding. If a pollster only reaches people one way, they’re missing important slices of the audience they’re trying to understand. Second, transparency about panel quality and fraud detection; that’s a huge hidden risk in survey data, and any vendor should be able to explain their methods for protecting against it. Third, a partner that treats polling as a strategic tool rather than a one-number deliverable. A topline number tells you some information, but the questions that decide races are who is persuadable, what your audience needs to hear, and how to reach them.

Q: How is AI changing survey research?
A: AI is both a threat and an opportunity. The biggest threat is that AI has made online panel fraud dramatically cheaper and more convincing. Bots can now generate coherent responses and pass many of the attention checks and other in-survey traps that used to identify fraudulent respondents, so maintaining data quality requires much more sophisticated detection methods. The opportunity is that these challenges are also driving innovation in survey methodology and fraud detection, and BlueLabs is working to develop better tools for identifying bad actors while preserving high-quality research.

Q: How can campaigns reach the infrequent, low-propensity voters that polls usually miss?
A: The first step is understanding what we call the “dynamic electorate,” the large group of Americans who move in and out of voting between cycles rather than voting or abstaining consistently. In research we presented at this year’s American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) conference, we found these voters can be identified, but they’re also the hardest to reach with many of today’s most common survey methods. In our Michigan focus groups, infrequent voters described themselves as exhausted, financially strained, and checked out of politics. These are pragmatists reacting to their day-to-day economic reality, and reaching them takes survey design built for people who don’t answer polls.

Contact: Jillian Hegedus, jillian@brysongillette.com

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bluelabs-promotes-joy-wilke-to-vice-president-of-polling-302879881.html

SOURCE BlueLabs