A standing instrument for asking the whole city.
Most civic debates run on anecdote, advocacy claims, and stale data. The people who show up to the 7 p.m. hearing get heard; everyone else is a statistical abstraction. Ask Portland exists to close that gap — to ask Portlanders, at scale, what they actually think and what they're actually living, and to publish honest numbers anyone can use to make better decisions.
Why independence is the whole point
A survey's only asset is trust, and trust dies the moment a result reads as advocacy wearing a clipboard. So Ask Portland is built to be believed by the people who disagree with it: neutral question wording, channels that deliberately include the voices we'd otherwise under-sample, weighting to the real population, and a method published in full. We'd rather report an inconvenient number correctly than a convenient one we can't defend.
The same instinct as the work behind it
This grows out of a simple conviction: people deserve to see the real numbers before decisions are made on their behalf — the same reason for pushing transparency on big public deals. Ask Portland systematizes that instinct. Instead of fighting for the data one issue at a time, it builds the standing capacity to measure where the city is, issue after issue.
Built to grow more representative over time
No single channel is Portland. We start where we can reach people quickly and get more representative with every survey by adding partners that reach the communities surveys routinely miss — culturally-specific organizations, neighborhood associations, senior networks, faith communities, and East Portland. Partners help shape the questions, are credited, and receive their community's results first, free, to use however they choose.
For community organizations
Reach your members with a short, respectful, translatable instrument — and get back credible data about your own community to use in your advocacy.
For researchers
Help shape sampling and weighting and put rigorous method behind a public good. A named methodologist makes the whole series stronger.
For journalists
A transparent, weighted read on where the city stands, with the full method attached, on the questions everyone's arguing about.
For funders
Civic-measurement infrastructure: a repeatable, trusted way to know what Portlanders actually think, decision by decision.
What's next
Survey 01 is housing — the fight everyone's having. Future rounds tackle other questions where the debate is starved of honest data, chosen by one test: is there a real decision this would inform, and is the current conversation running on anecdote? If the answer is yes twice, we ask Portland.
Want to partner, or just have your say?
Take the first survey, or reach out about bringing your community into the next one.