Poll Validity - CallerID w/Privacy Plus bigger factor than Cell Phones?

[NAO]

I've seen much hubub about cell phones in polls and the fact that some people have only cell phones, etc.

I have both cell and land line phones, but both have CallerID and my land line has Privacy Plus (forces blocked callers to identify). In my circle of people, these are MUST HAVE services.

I'm sure that this is why I've never been polled. It gets blocked if it shows up as "unavailable" or "unknown" and if a call shows up as out of my area code, and I don't know who it's from, I just ignore it. If it's important, they can leave a message. I suspect that this is typical call screening procedure for many.

How would Caller ID, Privacy Plus, and SOP screening of unknown calls affect polling validity?

[pabloseb]

1. The question is...

...are people using those services likely to vote in a different way (on average) than the whole population? In principle, that doesn't seem too plausible. Since these services are not free, one can expect that they have lower penetration among lower income people, but that's all I can think of.

On the other hand, the idea of the cell phone theory is that people using cell phones only are overwhelmingly young, so they are, as a group, very different from the whole population.

[ibegurpard]

3. I think that caller ID is pretty ubiquitous

And EVERYONE has answering machines.

[pabloseb]

4. Agree. That's why I think it has a small effect n/t

[depakid]

12. Actually, that's not necesarily the case at all

the whole deal with non-response bias is that people who answer calls (or polls) are different in significant ways from those who don't. Drawing a sample from only those who answer AND respond is bound to vary from the people who actually turn out and ote.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. All it means is the pollsters have to call more people.

It doesn't mean their samplings are wrong. Their samplings MAY be wrong because of other factors, but they predetermine what numbers of what groups they're going to survey. Then they start calling, and keep calling until they get their required number.

I'm not sure if it was John Zogby on The Daily Show or what it was, but someone explained that the number of people they have to call to get responses has increased dramatically in the past few years because of caller ID, cell phones, etc.

But even Zogby's cell phone survey results showed nothing out of the ordinary for the 18-24 year old group -- the cell phone responses pretty much matched the results for the same group on land lines. The question is whether or not they will actually vote or not, and that can't be determined with a pre-election poll.

[jacksonian]

9. been reading this all day

even Zogby's cell phone survey results showed nothing out of the ordinary for the 18-24 year old group -- the cell phone responses pretty much matched the results for the same group on land lines.

No, my understanding is that Zogby found that at most about 10% of voters were using cell phones and therefore were not being polled (paraphrasing wildly). Most were young, and that this group had the same voting preference as other 18-27's - which means Kerry advantage among this age group is, in Zogby's opinion, a (slightly) larger portion of the voting whole when taking cell phones into account.

If the cell phone user breakdown was more like the overall horserace - i.e. about 50-50 - then it would have no effect. But still, I don't really see this as that big, maybe a point pickup (at most) for Kerry not measured in the polls.

[jfern]

10. But

The question is, are the people who answer a truly random sample of the voting population?

[Awsi Dooger]

11. That's the best summation of this phone garbage I've seen on DU

More calls, more work and less spare time for pollsters and their employees. Otherwise, zero. Nada. Nil. A daily reach here for some type of nonexistent benefit on Kerry's behalf.

Zogby said on the Daily Show he now requires 10,000 calls for a 1500 sample, due to no answer or non response. Among the people who do eventually answer and respond are the young, yes even 18-24. No reason to believe they aren't representative of the cell phone crowd.

[PresidentErnestTBass]

5. We may have been polled, we don't know

My wife and I got Caller ID about a year ago. Unless it's someone we know that lights up the LCD we don't answer. I don't know if a pollster's name would show up but in the past several months (since late spring) there've been MANY more 800 and unlisted numbers calling here. Not one we picked up on. Who knows that could have been Gallup calling _us_ and we didn't do our part to help lol :)

[madrchsod]

6. my daughter called voters in kentucky

sat. night for a group opposed to crazy man bunning. of all the calls she made most were either hang ups or no answer. some wanted to know where to vote, some thought bunning was crazy, and others were voting for him. she also got people who had voted already. zoby on stewart`s show said 80% of the calls go unanswered and from my daughters account that seems to be close. we are in illinois....

[mcg]

7. From phone-banking I could tell something

Many people don't answer their phones, I mostly left messages.

[lady raven]

8. me too

I have the same thing, and I've gotten a couple of calls when I picked up and hear "you had a call from..." and then I hear a small piece of a political pitch. It's obvious that it couldn't get through my privacy manager- I'm sure a computer makes these calls and then gets the pollster on once voters pick up. Darn shame too- I almost wish I'd canceled mine just for this month so I'd get polled and so I'd get the recorded calls from all my favorite people ;-)