Mark Baldassare is survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he holds the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Public Policy. For the previous 15 years, he also served as president and CEO of PPIC. Prior to that, he served as PPIC’s director of research. He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology, and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since 1998. He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, authoring ten books and numerous reports on these topics. He often provides testimony before legislative committees and state commissions. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson Chair in Civic Governance. He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Rachel Lawler is research director at Competitive Edge Research and Communication. Previously, she was a survey analyst at PPIC, as well as a client manager at Kantar Millward Brown. She also served on the staff of former California congressman Elton Gallegly. She has experience in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Her specialties include questionnaire design, data preparation and analysis, and report writing. She joined the PPIC Survey Advisory Committee in 2023. She holds a BA in political science from Chapman University and an MA in American politics and foreign policy from the University College Dublin.