the cell phone factor

alien42

Lifer
Nov 28, 2004
12,858
3,290
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fivethirtyeight.com has a few write ups about this...

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/cellphones

the basic idea is that many of the pollster organizations call only land-line phones and there are quite a few of us who only have a cell phone. they calculated that those polls should have 2.8 points added in Obama's favor, primarily due to the age factor.

today they published an update with a graph that supports the 'cell phone effect'.

"The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points"

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com...-effect-continued.html


since i am an Obama supporter with no land-line it seems logical to me, guess we will find out in a couple days.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
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Originally posted by: miketheidiot
polls this weekend are meaningless, who was around to answer polls? :p
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Mike is an idiot if he wants to cling to that response. The cell phone bias question is not unique to only this weekend. The fact is that increasing numbers of people have abandoned landline phones, use only cell phones instead, and that demographic trends mainly democratic. Counter balancing that is the fact the same demographic tends to actually vote in lower than normal proportions.

There is a lot of solid science behind polling, and long after the the results of the only poll that matter come in by 11/5/2008, statisticians will still be working to tease out the the extent of the cell phone bias question.