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Barack_America

(28,876 posts)
Sat Feb 27, 2016, 09:39 AM Feb 2016

The revolution can't be reached by landline.

I know this gets mentioned every election, but truly, our polls are crap.

Really excellent article at the link about how the surge of cell phones (>43% of people are now cell phone only!), imprecision of Internet polls, and waning participation have reduced our polls to virtual trash.

What's the Matter with Polling?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/whats-the-matter-with-polling.html?_r=0

...Those paying close attention to the 2016 election should exercise caution as they read the polls. Because of the high cost, the difficulty in locating the small number of voters who will actually turn out in primaries and the increasing reliance on non-probability Internet polls, you are likely to see a lot of conflicting numbers. To make matters still worse, the cellphone problem is more acute in states than it is at the national level, because area codes and exchanges often no longer respect state or congressional boundaries. Some polling organizations will move to sampling from voter lists, which will miss recently registered voters and campaigns’ efforts to mobilize them...

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