What influence do cell phones have on polling numbers? It's an issue pollsters have struggled with for years, but never moreso than now as more households are using only mobile phones.
A study by the Pew Center last month suggested that polls including cell phone interviews showed slightly more support for Obama and slightly less for McCain. How much? "A consistent difference of two-to-three points in the margin," the study said.
The Ballot's polling expert, Tom Jensen of Raleigh's Public Policy Polling, explains today the difficulties pollsters face with cell phones, and he also offers a tip for poll watchers who want to see if a poll accounts for enough young voters - the primary users of cell phones.
Jensen conducts polls for PPP, which was widely regarded as one of the most accurate primary pollsters this year. PPP conducts polls primarily for Democratic candidates and other organizations.
Ballot: What's Public Policy Polling's approach to cell phone interviews?
Jensen: PPP gets its samples through a company that links phone numbers up to people’s voter registration records. So the numbers we are calling are whatever they have on file as people’s primary phone numbers, which includes some but probably not a lot of cell phones. During the primaries we found that we did a decent job of gauging the correct level of support for Barack Obama among young voters, but could have done a better job of correctly predicting the share of the electorate that young voters would comprise. So I’m not too worried about us not calling enough cell phones, but we will be looking to perfect our weights in the general.
Ballot: The Pew survey suggests that pollsters need to weight their surveys differently if they don't include cell phone callers. Seems like you agree.
Jensen: Whether people are calling cell phones or not, they need to be careful about how they weight their polls for age. All things being equal with almost any survey you are going to have too many respondents over 65 and not enough under 30. Senior citizens are closer to their phones and they have more time so they are almost always over represented.
Pollsters definitely need to weight to bring up the representation of younger voters and bring down the proportion of older voters. What that means for poll watchers is that they should always look at a poll’s demographic sample. There should be roughly equal numbers of voters 18-29 and voters over 65. If it’s 25% over 65 and 7% under 30, you probably have a poll that, intentionally or not, is going to skew Republican.
Ballot: Do people with cell phones participate in surveys at a greater level than landline users?
Jensen: One problem with polling cell phone only people is that not only are they harder to reach, but once you reach them it’s harder to get them to participate. A lot of polling companies have surveys that run 30 minutes or even longer. Most people aren’t going to want to do that on their cell phone, especially if they’re on the go.
So that’s an additional issue pollsters have to deal with besides just getting in touch with those people. Some companies have experimented with compensating cell phone poll respondents for their time and minute usage, but I don’t know how feasible that is on a larger scale.
Ballot: We've noticed some Internet polling this election, as well? Are there similar reliability challenges with those surveys?
Jensen: Internet polling is difficult because so much of it is ‘opt in’ where those getting polled are those who choose to be polled. For the most part you need to have a random sample where everyone in a given population has an equal chance of being surveyed to get scientifically accurate results, and no one’s figured out a real good way to do that on the Internet in American elections yet.
That’s the wave of the future, though. Folks say land line polling is becoming antiquated but with the increasing pace of society I imagine all phone polling is going to be phased out over the next few decades, just as in person interviews were replaced by telephone polls starting about 50 years ago. The person who can figure out the way to do internet polling right is going to be very wealthy!
Friday, October 10, 2008
The cell phone issue
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Obama is clearly the winner in this election. But what of McCain after it's over. He has a choice starting today....Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.
Enough with these polls already. Let's just let the actual votes show the winner... a waste of time and money in my opinion.
We never answer our land line unless we know who it is that's calling. Even with the "no call" registration, we get at least 5 calls a day that are sales or advertising related. So if a pollster calls us, they get no answer. I'm sure other people who have caller ID rarely get polled. That's one reason I don't believe that phone polls are anywhere close to being accurate.
In sum: It's even worse for McCain than it looks.
Barack Obama's newly appointed Muslim outreach adviser is coming under fire for meeting with Islamic groups with extremist views, just two months after her predecessor resigned over links to a radical cleric.
Minha Husaini met with members of several Islamic organizations in Virginia on September 15 -- including some that terrorism experts say have ties to Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Among the attendees were senior members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was listed by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-related trial.
Several people connected to CAIR have been convicted of felonies -- including on terrorism-related charges.
CAIR bills itself as the nation's largest Muslim civil-rights advocacy group. As recently as last year, it advised the Transportation Security Administration on sensitivity training regarding Muslim air travelers. Nihad Awad, a CAIR co-founder and executive director, met with President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.
But critics say CAIR has a long history of masquerading as a moderate Islamic group.
"These groups, even if they themselves are not active terrorist organizations, do subscribe to large amounts of the ideology that fuels the terrorism that we are being confronted with," said Andrew McCarthy, former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
CAIR did not return repeated calls for comment.
Awad, who was at the September meeting with Husaini, recently attended a dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Also present at the Sept. 15 meeting was Mahdi Bray, who has publicly announced his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, raised his fist in the air during a rally in Washington in October 2000 to demonstrate his support for the terror groups.
Bray refused to comment on the recent gathering. "It was a closed meeting," he told FOX News.
Johari Abdul Malik, imam of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va., also participated in the meeting. During a conference in Chicago in 2001, he told attendees, "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work." In November 2004 he told followers, "You will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America -- to being the first religion in America."
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign would not have sent a representative to the meeting had it known the list of participants.
"This meeting was not organized by the campaign -- our outreach staff attends many meetings in the course of each day and they accepted an invitation from community leaders to attend," LaBolt told FOX News in a written statement.
The Obama campaign's previous Muslim outreach advisor, Mazen Asbahi -- who stepped down in August following reports he was linked to a radical imam -- also attended the meeting.
In a brief telephone conversation, Asbahi refused to discuss why he was at the meeting or whom he was representing.
According to LaBolt, "[Asbahi] is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign."
I got rid of my land line phone service this past June and only have cell service. What a blessing to avoid not only telemarketers and charity folks, but political calls too. No more ridiculous taped calls from pols.
"Bray refused to comment on the recent gathering. "It was a closed meeting," he told FOX News".
More junk from Fox News. They reported that Obama had attended a madrassa too, but the claims were quickly proven false by many news organizations.
As for cell pones, used to hate them ,now it's all I have. No telemarketers, etc. I still get political calls at work on my 704 number, all of them from desperate Republicans, most from McCain, and most containing lies. If they only knew I lived in SC...
crysatalbass, educate yourself sweetie. The pollsters have a formula of calling a specific number of democrats, republicans and independents based on percentage of registration. If you don't answer your phone it doesn't mean the polls are fraudulent. Polls build in a margin of error but Obama is beyond that and in some cases like Gallup and newsweek he is way outside the margin of error with 10+ point leads. Plus he is leading is the major battleground states of OH, FL, VA, CO and NV. He's locked up 264 electoral votes so if he wins Florida or Ohio or Virginia it's over!
While some reportings for all candidates may prove to be untrue, I will have to say, that I have found none of the reportings on obama untruthful. Just read his own book, that he himself wrote about Frank Marshall Davis, which he said was his mentor. Davis was a member of the communist party of the USA. The reason, that I am concerned is that Ayers also has socialist and communist ideas as well. If he only had 1 friend or acquaintence with a communist, socialist, radical, racist, or activist background, i would not worry as much. But it appears that his judgment with these relationships only proves what he thinks and how he will try to run OUR country. It is proven fact that the education that obama and ayers promoted in chicago, was "radical". Maybe that is what you want for your children, but sorry I do not. Do you want your children to be controlled by the government and not have freedom? It is something to think about, which obama supporters are not taking serious.
"It is proven fact that the education that obama and ayers promoted in chicago, was 'radical'..."
How can what you say have any meaning when you have what you argue as a fact about the Annenberg Challenge, ie, that it is "radical," in quotes? What you've read about it being "radical" is just someone's opinion.
"Do you want your children to be controlled by the government and not have freedom?"
Even McCain is getting off the Smear Talk Express. Let it go.
I don't answer my phone (Cell or land line-thanks to caller ID) for anyone I don't know. Leave me a message. I don't give out my information as to who I'll vote for. Not 2 years in advance. Not the day I vote. It's none of your business. That's why we have separate polling stations. :)
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