Unlikely Voter

Conservative views on polls, science, technology, and policy

Telephone polls on the way out?

Many pollsters rely on random telephone calls in order to get their interviews done. It’s cheaper and easier than having to get people to sit down and do face-to-face interviews, because over the phone a broader range of people can be accessed. The result is a better sample than can be gotten from, say, a shopping mall.

But that ease may be on the way out if people stop owning landlines.

I’m not even sure what could replace the traditional telephone calls to households in the polling world. I don’t know if it’d even be possible. It’ll rock the political world if we lose such a valuable tool, and we will if the young people without landlines don’t bother to get one as they get older, and especially if more of their peers follow along. And why shouldn’t they? Why not just use an iPhone® and keep your number forever? Or better, why not just use Skype anywhere?

Will we have to grin and use inferior techniques like Twitter searches? Whoever solves this and patents it could become rich.


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