The aggregating giant Huffington Post has acquired one of the most prominent aggregators of opinion surveys, Pollster.com, the New York Times reports. Pollster, previously hosted by the National Journal, brings together the results of numerous national and local opinion polls and, using a small team of experts, analyzes the combined intelligence. This is the second big acquisition of a polling aggregation and analysis site by a major media organization in as many months: Back in June, the Times itself announced it would be hosting FiveThirtyEight, the site founded by blogger Nate Silver. As for the Huffington Post, founder Arianna Huffington views the purchase as a bit of a coup. “It’s going to beef up our political coverage,” she told the Times. “Polling, whether we like it or not, is a big part of how we communicate about politics. And with this, we’ll be able to do it in a deeper way.” The Huffington Post recently also started a Capitol Hill newsletter and hired four new reporters to cover the midterm elections, indicating an effort to compete with the many already-existing inside-the-beltway publications in the fields of original content and reporting.
