Centre for Public Opinion Research

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Centre for Public Opinion Research (CBOS) is a polling institute in Poland, based in Warsaw. It started in 1982 during communist times and has, since 1997, operated as a non-profit public foundation created by a special law. Its main job is to provide data on what Poles think about political and social issues.

Major Polish newspapers such as Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, and Polityka regularly hire CBOS to conduct polls. CBOS also does commercial market research to help fund its operations. Each month, CBOS surveys about 1,000 adults in a study called Current Problems and Events. The findings are published monthly and made available online about one month later (a practice since 1998). Each monthly report focuses on a specific topic, with some topics repeating over time.

CBOS publishes an abridged English-language newsletter called Polish Public Opinion, which contains summaries of results and is available online for free. In total, CBOS produces more than 200 reports and books each year. The organization employs over 40 staff, including sociologists, economists, statisticians, and computer scientists, and works with a nationwide network of interviewers.

CBOS is overseen by a board established by the 1997 law, consisting of seven academic experts and representatives from the government and parliament. It has faced accusations of bias or “magic” by some outlets. For example, before the 2015 presidential election, CBOS showed rising support for Civic Platform, while another CBOS poll for TVN24 had PiS ahead. After the 2019 parliamentary election, Europe Elects noted CBOS had the largest cumulative error among Polish pollsters, with a tendency to favor the ruling PiS.