According to this Huffington Post article, most polling, which is meant to take a random representative sampling of opinions, is skewed towards people with land-lines. Why is this? Though there are cell phone numbers used in the polls, I can definitely believe that most of the calls are going to listed, registered, land-lines. A young person, who has a cell-phone, no land-line, and is living away at college somewhere is much harder to track down. This is especially true as most technologically-savvy youth are able to put themselves on the national do not call registery.
"Yet Obama's huge lead in the youth demographic may have been partially obscured by polling techniques. Although most pollsters do call people on cell phones, they still rely too heavily on land lines to get an accurate picture of young people's political leanings, according to Della Volpe. Half of young people age 18-24 do not have land line phones, he said, and they have sharply different political views than those with land lines about the big issues -- the war, the economy, and who should run the country."I also really like the idea that the cell-phone-only youth has a provable difference in ideas on politics. I like to believe that, when you're plugged into the information around us you'll be much more likely to have stronger and better thought out positions.
The proof will be in the election on Tuesday, when we find out if maybe the polls are entirely wrong, and, as I suspect, Barack will have a heftier lead than believed. I think that opinion polls serve a dual purpose in politics... firstly, they fill their intended purpose of showing us what people are thinking. Secondly, and more insidiously, people are guided by opinion polls. Even people who are very well-spoken and informed will be swayed by a certain candidate having significant numbers in a poll. They also serve as a sort of litmus test of who is worthy of further consideration. Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to have more reliable and faster acting poll numbers.
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