Cellphones are people too.
In the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll Obama has opened up an impressive 52 to 43 lead over John McCain among likely voters. Hott! Just after the Republican convention it was McCain 49, Obama 47.
But just how do they conduct these polls? Well, they call people… on the telephone. No, not that fancy touchscreen contraption you have in your pocket. I’m talking about the talking telegraph you have (or increasingly don’t have) wired to your wall.
Left out of the polling are people who don’t have landlines, or so called “cellphone only” voters. This group is made up largely of younger people. You can chalk it up to the ignorance of youth, but young people tend to like Obama.
PEW just did a series of polls that include “cellphone only” voters. The shift in the data is not as big as you might think. When cellphone only voters are factored in the numbers shift towards Obama by about two-to-three points. You can call that insubstantial, but in politics we call that “the difference between winning and losing”.
About The Author - Stirling McLaughlin is an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator in New York City. Stirling enjoys vegan baking, expensive sportswear and mustard and relish sandwiches. Stirling lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter. - Visit Stirling's site.
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Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight has a good analysis that looks at cell phones and polls beyond Pew
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/cellphones
FiveThirtyEight says that WaPo/ABC are using cellphone data, but their internals make no mention of it…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_092308.html?sid=ST2008092303897
hmmm im always skeptical of this … it feels like the dog that won’t hunt or whatever to me. But hopefully!
also: John McCunt.
Well, there’s no doubt you’ll get a different collection of people by including or excluding cell phones (and particularly cell-phone-onlys), but the question remains to be answered whether cell phone users have different voting habits on top of different ideas about how to handle personal telecommunications.