Polling & cell phones

Tman · Post by **Tman** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 1:25 pm

Anyone who follows polls (I've gotten addicted to the Electoral-vote web site), sees that the tide is churning on an constant basis, almost like a swing on the playground.

An interesting article on NewsDay states:

Anybody who believes these national political polls are giving you facts is a gullible fool.

Any editors of newspapers or television news shows who use poll results as a story are beyond gullible. On behalf of the public they profess to serve, they are indolent salesmen of falsehoods.

This is because these political polls are done by telephone. Land-line telephones, as your house phone is called.

The telephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million cell phones being used in America today - 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according to the cell phone institute in Washington.

There is no way to poll cell phone users, so it isn't done.

Not one cell phone user has received a call on their cell phone asking them how they plan to vote as of today.

The article goes on to say:

Beyond that, you miss younger people who live on cell phones. If you do a political poll on land-line phones, you miss those from 18 to 25, and there are figures all over the place that show there are 40 million between the ages of 18 and 29, one in five eligible voters.

And the great page-one presidential polls don't come close to reflecting how these younger voters say they might vote. The majority of them use cell phones and nobody ever asks them anything.

BTW - Zogby, who was quoted in the above article, responded here to qualify his remarks he gave to Breslin.

I thought this was interesting. Makes you wonder how much of a suprise we're in for in November.

Tman

Palzon · Post by **Palzon** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:20 pm

drivel. the polls are accurate. period. i have explained this elsewhere, but i'd be happy to do it again if you doubt me.

Lothar · Post by **Lothar** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:54 pm

It's mostly wishful thinking by the Kerry camp / Kerry supporters.

Polls are demographically scaled. What this means is, if they only reach half as many young people as they think they should have, they'll weight responses from young people more heavily. So even though they might not be reaching the young people who only have cell phones, they ARE reaching an adequate number of young people.

The only reason you'd expect a boost to one candidate or the other because of cell phones is if cell-phone-only users tend to be significantly skewed from land-line users of the same age/gender group.

In other words: Palzon is right. This is drivel.

Tman · Post by **Tman** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:55 pm

Palzon wrote:drivel. the polls are accurate. period. i have explained this elsewhere, but i'd be happy to do it again if you doubt me.

you mean here??

where you say

Palzon wrote:...basically, the polls will detect, in each demographic, who intends to vote and for whom. The demographics are crucial because thousands of surveys may be completed and then only so many results used to reflect demos such as age, race, gender, income, etc. once a demographic is filled, those respondents screen out of the survey. each demographic is represented based on comparison to census info.

If polls are so valid, how do you explain the swinging of the polls? Which company do you respect in their polling ability? Because, quite frankly, there are HUGE DIFFERENCES for the SAME STATE on a POLL given on or near the SAME DATE.

Zogby states here that:

Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place.

This is no small consideration. Given the fact that each candidate receives anywhere between eight in ten and nine in ten support from voters in his own party, any change in party identification trades point for point in the candidate's total support. My polls use a party weight of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican and 26% Independent. Thus in examining the Newsweek poll, add three points for Mr. Bush because of the percentage of Republicans in their poll, then add another 8% for Mr. Bush for the reduction in Democrats. It is not hard to see how we move from my two-point lead to their eleven-point lead for the President.

This (party affiliation) is but one way different methodologies can explain all the variances we're seeing.

So, you don't think there are any differences between "people who only own cell phones or have call-blocking or screen all their calls" and "people who have a land line and are at home and choose to talk with a company to participate in a survey?"

Oh, and Palzon, which polls do you follow (if any?) Note: Gallup missed the boat in 2000 and predicted Bush would win the popular vote by a 48-46 lead

Lothar · Post by **Lothar** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 6:04 pm

Tman, recall that 48-46 is well within the margin for error of +/- 3% of the actual popular vote outcome last year.

Also note that electoral-vote.com is pretty heavily slanted in the Kerry direction, at least in terms of the news and such he picks up. While the polls tend to be pretty good, he's a big fan of giving reasons why Kerry should do better than the polls suggest.

For the record, I follow the polls on electoral-vote.com and elsewhere -- I just don't listen to the crap the guy writes.

There are differences in polls -- methodology is but one of the sources of error; strange timing is sometimes another. But the presence / absence of cell phones is very unlikely to be a significant source of error in the polls, because cell phone users don't differ significantly from land-line users in the same demographic group.

Gooberman · Post by **Gooberman** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 7:26 pm

I never responded to Palzon in the other thread because he has first hand knowledge, I do not. But I have talked to others who also, currently, work in polls whose sentiments about them are very skeptical.

Zoop! · Post by **Zoop!** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 10:12 pm

There is no perfect poll. That's why they have the margin of error.

Palzon · Post by **Palzon** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 12:42 am

The most relevant part was here:

Palzon said:

[/b]some may have heard me say this before, but the polls are accurate on the issue of the presidency, especially Gallup. if the polls weren't accurate then the trends would fluctuate wildly. they dont. there are consistent trends showing voter preference over time. also, gallup's ability to predict who would win is very impressive. afterall, they not only said that 2000 was "too close to call", they predicted truman would defeat dewey.[/b]

i trust gallup for polling. they're an evil company. they treat their employees like shiz. and i wouldn't trust them with a red cent of mine. however, they know how to do polling properly.

and in 2000 i WAS there and when the last poll ended Gallup did say it was "too close to call". the trend is the crucial part. maybe gallup said bush was leading. but WHEN did they say that?

as far as other pollsters who are skeptical...ask them why. they may be skeptical because their organization was bad at polling. they may be skeptical because the average american (in how they treat pollsters) is dull, obtuse, mean spirited, ignorant, and proud of it. i'm skeptical of the electorate, but not the results of the voter polls. there are other polls that may be less accurate, but i trust gallup on the election.

watch the results, watch the trends, then watch the outcome in November.

Lothar · Post by **Lothar** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:54 am

I was just digging around the electoral-vote.com site, and I noticed something.

A few days ago (sept. 20), they had Bush at 327 and Kerry at 211. Today, it's Bush 256, Kerry 239. Bush is -71 while Kerry is +28. That's a pretty big shift, considering the most significant news recently has been that the national guard memos were forgeries (certainly that wouldn't hurt Bush, would it?) It turns out that they got 17 new polls, 16 from Zogby.

So, I decided to look at some of their state-by-state info. It becomes clear looking through half a dozen states' histories in the polls (consider WI and PA) why Kerry suddenly jumped -- because Zogby consistantly polls him 5-10% higher than anybody else. You watch these trend lines, and they tend to have a bunch of peaks for Kerry right when they get a Zogby poll in. So, if you add 16 Zogby polls, you can expect a big jump for Kerry.

So, if you're counting on Electoral-vote.com to do the projection for you, be aware that when they've just gotten a set of Zogby polls, they're going to have a much more pro-Kerry outlook than average. In fact, you can expect a swing almost all the way back the other way tomorrow due to the fact that the latest Gallup polls reverse almost everything the Zogby polls said.

Given Palzon's statements about Gallup, I think I'll keep paying attention to them, and ignore Zogby :)

Tman · Post by **Tman** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 5:24 pm

Either Gallup is way behind or you need a paid subscription to see the real numbers - did you notice that on Gallup's site, they only have 10 states that are this year? The other 40 are historical from 2000....

Florida: Aug 20-22nd...that's nearly a month ago!

Regardless, it's just amazing how different some of these polls are. Look at Mason-Dixon / Zogby differences for New Mexico!

I think it's going to be a crap shoot. Either that or some sadistic person has cracked into all these polling companies computers & loaded them up with phone numbers of "plants" just to screw with everyone!