Are Telephone Polls Understating Support for Trump?

[struggle4progress]

MARCH 31, 2017
By Courtney Kennedy, Scott Keeter, Andrew Mercer, Nick Hatley, Nick Bertoni and Arnold Lau



... To examine the impact of interview mode on expressions of opinion about policies and political leaders, Pew Research Center conducted a large-scale survey experiment that compared responses to 27 questions fielded on both a telephone and a web survey. Of these questions, 13 addressed attitudes about Trump or policies closely associated with him; four measured impressions of other political figures (Vice President Mike Pence, former President Barack Obama, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Russian President Vladimir Putin); and 10 tapped core political values. For this analysis, the pro-Trump or conservative response option of the question was used to compare estimates from the web versus phone groups.2 The findings would be virtually unchanged if the anti-Trump or liberal response option had been used ...

http://www.pewresearch.org/2017/03/31/are-telephone-polls-understating-support-for-trump/

[Charles Bukowski]

1. No, web polls are overstating his support.

But please, refer to them if they make you feel better.

[Amishman]

7. We've heard this before about Trump and polls

His base does not get represented well in polls.

I'd pay more attention to the trend lines than the actual numbers. Whatever sampling problem exists, as long as the methodology stays the same the error should as well even if we don't know what it is. His support is definitely dropping but I wouldn't trust polls to pinpoint the exact level.

Just knowing it's dropping is good enough for me.

[hrmjustin]

2. personally I think some won't admit to liking him.

[samnsara]

3. I one last night from some newspaper...

it took nearly an hour and I thought the questions were fair. the woman had an accent that I am guessing was German.

[titaniumsalute]

4. For the most part the above data

Falls within the margin or error. I used to work a a large research company. We debated a lot regarding polls conducted by phone versus online.

We liked phone polls more because an interviewer could control the process better. People are inherently nice and don't want to disappoint a pollster so they go through the entire survey. Online people can bail out anytime and not be emotional about it thus leaving questions unanswered.

Could phone polls be more biased so people look how they want to be perceived? (Such as I listen to NPR versus Howard Stern because that would make me smarter.) Yes there is some of that. But the research I've seen says people tend to be pretty honest mostly because pollsters rather quickly go through questions without the respondent having lots of time to conduct a well thought out answer.

[Alea]

5. polls

told me trump would lose

[davsand]

6. If I had to guess, they'd tend to be better for him.

Lots of folks have gone cellular rather than using a landline. Can't speak for all areas of the country, but when we've used telephone polling in our area, the demographic has skewed older and lower income.




Laura