Are Today's Polls Clueless?

Frisky070802 writes "As noted on electoral-vote, Jimmy Breslin has an interesting article in Newsday on why polls are broken. This is because they poll only landline phones, and a substantial fraction of younger people have only cell phones -- so they hit a biased demographic. If a majority of younger voters tend Democratic, the polls could be giving Kerry a raw deal. Hmm, could this be why two polls released this week vary so widely?"

Comments

Re:More cellphones in large cities

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on my experience as a college graduate of this year, I can say pollsters are definitely missing a huge segment of the 18-25 population. NONE of my friends have a landline to their apartment.

Sure, but do they vote? It doesn't matter if they miss people who don't vote. I started voting at 18, but in the last few years, 95% of the undergraduates I've asked say they don't vote and didn't care if I thought they should.

Re:Who cares?

[Jordy]

I've always wondered why the age groups were so biased against young people. I mean look at them:

18-20 (3 years worth of people representing 10.7 million)
21-24 (4 years representing 13.8 million)
25-44 (20 years representing 83.3 million!)
45-64 (20 years representing 53.7 million)
65+ (avg age of ~80 = ~16 years representing 31.8 milion)

Graphing it would have been better. Yes, young people vote less, but is 24 really much worse than 25 or is there a spike at 30 or 35 that brings everyne in the age bracket up?

Re:Who cares?

[PurpleFloyd]

First of all, I'm a college student, and I vote. Every election, local or national. I look through the voter's pamphlet, visit candidates' websites, and generally try to make an informed choice. By doing that, I'm doing my "civic duty" better than many middle-aged adults.

Second, I think the youth vote will be far more of a factor in this election than it has been in the past. An example: Among my circle of friends, I'm known as someone who is very politically active, and thus has been the go-to guy to get registered to vote. I have helped register many friends (and friends of friends, and so on), including several who have never shown any political inclination before. As might be expected, these people are planning to vote Kerry in droves. Quite simply, they think Bush is a reckless cowboy, and feel that he is selling out their futures with reckless defecit spending. While the 18-25 turnout may be lower than the national average, I think that it will turn out to be one of the decisive groups in this election.

Polls today are not accurate.

[yoder]

I live in rural Minnesota and have done some calling for local politicians. Political parties can't even get their contact lists right, I can't imagine a polling entity being any more accurate.

Even within rural areas like this it is almost impossible to get a handle on who is for or against whom. In this divisive political environment people are not speaking their minds because they are afraid of being singled out and of hostility. This alone pretty much guarantees that polls will not be accurate.

The death of democracy?

[khasim]

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again into bondage."

Alexander Frasier Tytler
"The decline and fall of the Athenian republic"

It looks like we're at "apathy" now. Time to break the cycle.

Re:What a horrible article

[cyberformer]

This is really interesting, but you're repeating that "flip-flopper" BS about Kerry.

Kerry isn't perfect, but he really hasn't "flip flopped" much. Different versions of the same bill come up in congress, and most congresscritters (including Kerry) vote for some and against others. For example, Kerry voted for a bill giving the US military $87 billion for Iraq, but against a version of the same bill that also included a provision that enlarged the deficit to give millionaires an even bigger tax cut.

There are some areas where Kerry has actually changed his mind, like fighting in 'Nam and then protesting the war. But changing your beliefs when new evidence emerges is not something to be ashamed of. It's just rational.