Respondents to the primary dealer survey are more likely to be Fed watchers and therefore more likely in tune with Fed thinking than the average market participant.
For example, as seen in figure 2, a comparison of the June 2013 primary dealer survey with the contemporaneous Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey, which draws from a wider sample of forecasters, reveals that Blue Chip respondents were more likely to expect a later start of tapering and thus more likely to have been surprised by Chairman Bernanke’s communications.