Interesting poll info

[Clinton Crusader]

Yes I know dont listen to polls, but this is quite interesting.


The American Research Group is polling all 50 states. All were telephone polls with a MoE of 4%. The first 20 polls were just released. The rest will follow soon. The first batch were mostly the solid blue and solid red states, including the first polls for Nebraska and Wyoming. Bush has commanding leads of 31% and 36%, respectively in those two states. That's why nobody was willing to spend the money to poll them before. The only two states that changed are Maine (was tied, now Kerry by 4%) and Colorado (was Kerry by 1%, now Bush by 1%).

The poll also concluded that without Nader, Kerry is leading Bush nationally by 48% by 45% and with Nader by 46% to 45% with Nader at 3%. Among likely voters, it is Kerry 47%, Bush 47%, Nader 3%. The Harris national poll (Sept. 9-13) puts Kerry ahead 48% to 47% and the Pew poll (Sept. 11-14) puts Bush ahead 47% to 46%. In contrast, Gallup (Sept. 13-15) has Bush ahead 55% to 42%. It is not clear why Gallup is contradicting three other polls that say the race is tied nationally.

Jimmy Breslin of Newsday had an column yesterday that, if true, makes this website irrelevant. Breslin claims that pollsters do not call the 168 million cell phones in the country. Since many younger voters do not have a land line and just a cell phone, they will be hugely underrepresented in all the telephone polls. Since younger voters lean more towards the Democrats than the average voter, the polls may be greatly underestimating Kerry's strength. Between missing all the people who have only a cell phone and no land line and the 5 million overseas voters, the polls maybe missing a very large section of the electorate.

:kick:

[Worst Username Ever]

1. Here is one young person with only a cell and no land line

:kick:

[speedoo]

7. You are one of many, shylock.

My daughter also has only a cell and no land line.

What about those who have gone to internet based phone lines. Many of them presumably have dropped their land lines.

Seems to me that there would not be very many voters for the coWard in these groups.

[quaoar]

2. That infor comes from here

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

[Clinton Crusader]

3. yeah forgot to include link thanks

:kick:

[SaveElmer]

4. Also missing new voters

Anecdotally anyway, we have seen a fairly large upsurge in new voter registration. The definition of a likely voter relies in part on past voting patterns. So, they may be undercounting here as well.

[Philostopher]

5. The point about cell phones is a very good one.

I've seen it mentioned here many times -- hell, I've mentioned it myself. Currently, there isn't any comprehensive listing of cellular phone numbers, at least here where I live -- don't know about anywhere else. So where would polling organizations get cell numbers unless people volunteered them?

I think people like it that way -- they don't get the same 'garbage' calls they get on their listed land line phones. Polling companies can't get around caller I.D. either -- if you have caller I.D. and screen calls, chances are you will screen a polling organization's call. This would account for Mr. Nownow and I, and I'm guessing a good many households in our same bracket -- technically proficient enough to like gadgets like digital answering machines and caller I.D.; affluent enough to afford them, but not so affluent we'd fall 'out of the mainstream.' Other than the fact we're childless in our middle age, we'd be the target demographic for lots of that kind of stuff -- Nielsen, Arbitron, consumer surveys, polling. We don't answer the phone unless the caller identifies, though, and even then usually only if it's somebody we already do business with.

And we don't even have a cell phone -- but most of our friends do, and most people younger do. Some of them have only a cell phone, and either an unpublished land line phone or none.

[aquart]

6. I keep telling the kids that if they show up, they change the world.

Because nobody is counting them now.