Confused About Confusing Polls? What About Cellphones?

Applies to Hawaii, too. 

Capitol Watch reports:

Maybe you’ve noticed all the different poll results for the various political races, including locally.

This article in The New York Times may help you understand part of what’s going in. The title alone captures it well: “Pollsters Struggle to Pin Down the Right (Cell) Number.”

Excerpts:

Political pollsters have long struggled to keep pace with changes in how Americans communicate with one another — or don’t. One of their central challenges is the decline in “response rates” among voters.

Another is ensuring that their means of reaching people produce accurate reflections of voter sentiment. The rapid rise of cellphones as the sole means of telephone communication for many Americans — now about one-third of the population, government researchers say — has produced a distinct subgroup within the electorate.

—Chad Blair

Photo courtesy Ed Yourdon.