'Cellphone Effect' Could Skew Polling Predictions

Ponca City writes "A good deal of polling data suggest that Republicans may win the House of Representatives in today's mid-term elections. However, Nate Silver writes in the NY Times that there are several factors that could skew the election, allowing Democrats to outperform their polls and beat consensus expectations. Most prominent is the 'cellphone effect.' In 2003, just 3.2% of households were cell-only, while in the 2010 election one-quarter of American adults have ditched their landlines and rely exclusively on their mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don't call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied. Another factor that could skew results is the Robopoll effect, where there are significant differences between the results shown by automated surveys and those which use live human interviewers — the 'robopolls' being 3 or 4 points more favorable to Republicans over all. It may be that only adults who are extremely engaged by politics (who are more likely to be Republican, especially this year) bother to respond to robocalls. Still, when all is said and done, 'more likely than not, Republicans will indeed win the House, and will do so by a significant margin,' writes Silver. 'But just as Republicans could beat the consensus, Democrats could too, and nobody should be particularly shocked if they do.'"

Comments

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[Nadaka]

In many cases, I agree. In 2000 I voted green even though I didn't agree with half their agenda, I've been disenfranchised by moving around for several years since then. But I just voted strait democrat in this election because the republicans in my area decided to go with comic book villain style candidates.

Rick Scott (R, FL gov) = Lex Luthor

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[vertinox]

It doesn't matter who you elect - voting simply creates the illusion of consent.

Not exactly true.

There are key differences in Democrat and Republicans.

That said, I disagree with both of them, but I vote against the party which I see the greatest threat to my personal liberty and well being.

Which I view as of now as the Republicans as they seem to be willing to trade my personal rights and freedoms off to either security issues, morality through legislation, and or various other issues that affect me personally.

Its not that the Democrats do similar things, but they do less of them.

I originally, voted against the democrats in 2000 simply because of the DMCA, anti-violent video game laws, and anti-smoking legislation only to find out that the republicans created the Patriot act and various laws that were started to make it feel like we were heading towards a Police state.

So given the choice of living in a Nanny State vs a Police state, I'd rather put up with a Nanny state... (catch my drift)

Of course if you really want change, you should start raising awareness of STV and Proportional Representation

You see... As one of the first major nationalized democracies which instituted the First past the post system which was seen as the best way to handle the situation as no one had tried this before in such a way. Although people like Jefferson did point out the mathematical problems with the system, no one bothered to change it.

Now when European monarchies were overthrown and replaced by democracies over the 19th and 20th centuries a great deal of the instituted proportional democracies (most notably the Wiemar republic) simply because it is more mathematically fair and prevents the dominance of 2 major political parties we face in our first past the post system.

Arguably the UK has the same issue as they've also had a first past the post system in voting system that has lasted longer than the US system and are actually talking about trying out STV or a watered down version of prop rep.

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[GayBliss]

You should at least turn in your ballot. There might be *something* to vote for among all the positions/issues. You don't have to vote for each one. Skip any that don't have a candidate you like. Even if it means you don't vote for anything, at least you are recorded as voting. Then when the results come out the total of votes between all the candidates will be less than the number of people voting, and it becomes more apparent that they weren't liked too well. It won't change who wins, but not voting won't either.

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[Idbar]

Actually, if there's no method for you to express those feelings, your system is broken. Even worse, not complaining and "sitting" it just supports the fact that you don't care. Therefore, you're supporting the ones you don't like.

My country allows you to mark "blank" on the ballot, in theory, if "blank" wins (thing that never happens due to your same thinking), the election repeats and none of the candidates that were in that election can go to that round.

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[Bigjeff5]

While the high-profile election seats may be that way, local elections actually generally have people that will effect your daily life.

More importantly high-profile candidates almost always come from these positions first. If you shut them down before they become "somebody" you've prevented that future bad candidate from being a possibility.

The reason we have such a huge problem with representatives is because politicians are practically ignored at the time when they are most easily influenced.

For example, Obama started out as a state senator (some funny business there, of course, but that's Chicago politics), became a US Senator for the state of Illinois 8 years later, and is now the president. He could have very easily been shut down at the state level by a competent opponent and a few thousand votes.

Don't tell me your vote doesn't matter. It doesn't have great influence when you think it should, but it certainly has a huge impact when you aren't really paying attention.