Richard MichaelInaccurate Polls: A Hole in the System
August 26th 2008 16:20
what is this thing anyway?
I came upon an interesting bit of information recently that really made me think about how Americans are being surveyed regarding their political beliefs. If you're like me than you didn't know much about how polls work, you just blindly trusted them, objective numbers like the score of a football game. But when I found out that most major polls are conducted via land line phones, I was immediately intrigued by the major hole in this system.
I'm twenty four years old and I haven't had a land line phone since I lived with my parents in high school. Six years I've thrived off of my cell phone, six years I've never been polled. When I started thinking about it, I realized that I couldn't think of one person I knew (besides older relatives and co-workers) who still had a land line phone. That means there's a huge chunk of young Americans whose opinions are not being represented.
Some might say, but what about other recent elections? Those polls were relatively accurate. That may be true, but in 2000 cell phones weren't nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. Furthermore, as in 2000 and in 2004 (and most other elections) young people are generally a very small voting block. However, in this election young people came out in record numbers for the primaries, and are expected to put up the same kind numbers in the general election in November.
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