'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

Do you want to vote for...

[Maxo-Texas]

The noble candidate A, who will lower taxes, expand benefits, and is for a strong America

or

The candidate B, who voted for increased taxes and fewer benefits.

---

Do you want to vote for"

Corporate controlled sock... er "Conservative" Candidate A?

or

Corporate controlled sock... er "Liberal" Candidate B?

no, no bias here at all

[argStyopa]

Complete wishful bullshit.
Amazing how much rationalization is going into analyzing (and trying to explain away) polling data that suggests a Democratic bloodbath. What, too much "change" in the air now?

Fwiw and purely anecdotally, I've always seen results skew 4+ percent to the right of polls, because consevatives (even 'engaged' ones), are far more likely to share their view with a pollster, while liberals - especially the young - LOVE to tell everyone how liberal they are.

Re:Polls are irrelevant

[spun]

The party which wins will be the party which is more successful in hacking electronic voting machines.

That is the line Republicans are pre-feeding to the press, in case they lose or do not win as much as expected, they will simply trot out voter fraud and whine like the bitchy princesses they are.

Re:Vote or Die

[Golddess]

Every single election, I proudly "throw my vote away". Why? Because maybe, just maybe, if there are enough people like me, assholes like you will look and say "huh, maybe that third party really does have a chance", and next election you too will vote for them.

Thank you for being a part of the problem.

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[nschubach]

"Troll" is not a disagree mod.

Re:Vote or Die

[Critical Facilities]

we've dedicated trillions to a healthcare system which will bankrupt employers and be unaffordable to citizens.

How do you figure that?

Re:Vote or Die

[Red Flayer]

According to wikipedia [wikipedia.org] you are incorrect.

According to the definition of the terms, I am correct.

The public debt is the summation of the deficit over time. You're confusing the terms.

The person (not sure if it was you) I responded to claimed that the rate of borrowing increased; this is completely false. The rate of borrowing has reduced -- but, as your figures show, we're still borrowing, so the public debt has increased.

If you're going to cite statistics to make a point, kindly please ensure that you cite relevant statistics that actually represent the topic of the discussion.

Re:Vote or Die

[Red Flayer]

Jimmy Carter had a Democrat congress and nearly doomed us all.

Yes and no. Carter was a failure, but the economic situation was hardly all his doing -- though his response was woefully misguided. And as for dooming us all... he very likely delayed our doom by 40 years by pardoning Nixon, which was seen as unforgivable and cost him any chance at getting his policies actually implemented (which is usually a second-term thing). Now we have the situation Carter avoided with his masterstroke, which is partisan insanity that is causing legislative paralysis[1].

Bill Clinton, for his first two years, almost did what Obama has done to us now. Most of the people on this site are probably too young to understand how truly horrible both of those time periods were.

What? Those time periods were not horrible because of Carter or Clinton. They were horrible because of their predecessors, just as the time now is horrible because of Obama's predecessor's administration.

Obama has not wreaked this economy upon us, the Bush administration and the prior Congress did.

Clinton fixed a broken economy, and if it weren't for people who are blind to the economic benefits of social safety nets and public healthcare, Obama's administration would be able to fix this one.

Another note about the first two years of Clinton's presidency -- the last year of Bush41's presidency ('88) was just as bad, and more attributable to him that '89-90 were to Clinton.

I'd be willing to bet you recall certain times as particularly awful partly because you associate Democratic control of Congress & the Presidency as awful -- although it may be subconscious on your part.

[1] Of course, as a conservative, you believe this to be the best thing since sliced bread. As someone who sees a need for action on many different items, I see it differently than you.

Re:I'm sitting this one out

[spun]

All of them? Isn't that a bit defeatist?

Given that elections with high turn outs tend to go to the liberals, while low turnout elections go to the conservatives, one might even speculate that fueling voter apathy is a Republican ploy. "Hey, let's get them all to believe that voting is for chumps, that it is hopeless and a waste of time. Our rabid base won't care, and scared old white voters always vote, but the kids and the hippies will stay home. Brilliant!"