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October 27, 2004
Cut Nose, Save Face
A little while back, NPR had a small segment on how the current crop of youth voter opinions are not being reflected in the polls. Unfortunately I have been unable find the article anywhere online. Up steps Wired with an article talking about much of the same thing, although leaning a bit more towards the youth voters.
The basic premise is traditional polling methods use telephone polls to query participants on their opinions during the election season. This helps create those nifty graphs seen all over the news that help to confuse and disorient the public (me opinionated? no!). It turns out that you cannot call a cellular telephone, only a traditional land line based phone. This works out nicely in the US, mainly due to the bizarre scheme of charging for incoming calls with no way to reverse the charges (even on 800 numbers). One of the hidden gotcha's in this scenario is that the youth of America have begun to leave traditional land lines and begun to only use cellular telephones. Hence the not having their opinions counted/heard for the poll.
The quote on the NPR segment that caught my attention went (roughly) something like "this doesn't impact the polls at all because that demographic typically doesn't vote." While the validity of this statement can be debated (I for one don't know any truth to it), I think the polling organizations have their large blinders on a little too tight. If this trend is starting now, what is to say that these upwardly mobile youth will be using a land line by the next election? As they become older, they're obviously going to stay happy with their current constant connectedness. What about those who move from actual telephones to VoIP communication over their computer?
I give the polling organizations one to two election years to adapt or perish unless cellular companies change their billing rules. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
O'Doyle Rules!
Posted by Dan at October 27, 2004 11:06 PM