538 On the Cell Effect (We keep hitting controversial polling topics, haha)

[Sam Spade]

You do realize that Pew, CBS/NYT and Time have always had a historical Democratic lean, even before the invention of the cell phone.

Meanwhile, Gallup shows nothing.

[Sam Spade]

You do realize that Pew, CBS/NYT and Time have always had a historical Democratic lean, even before the invention of the cell phone.

My essential problem.

However, I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that this phenomenon isn't going to show up eventually.  How could it not?

I never said it wouldn't show up, Alcon.  I believe I said so in the other thread on the matter with Lunar. 

But this analysis does nothing to prove to me at present that the *cellphone effect* is any different than the *weekend bounce* JJ talks about.  I think both get lost in the noise.

[Sam Spade]

We're talking about people who don't have landlines, States.

If you read the article, it claims that seven out of eight cell-only users have favorable opinions of Obama.

Yeah, but they are young voters and we know their history of reliability when election time rolls around. So it probably evens out.

In the past that's definitely been true. Turnout among young voters was far higher in the primaries this year than before; remains to be seen whether that will carry over into the general.

Ya, but that's not the important figure.  In order to conclude that we're understimating young (18-29) voters who might be cellphone-only, and that this may skew things towards Obama, first, young voters must greatly increase their turnout as compared to any increase in older voter turnout.  If not, any cellphone dilemma will get lost in the noise.

Moreover, I really doubt that there is much distinction in voting patterns between young voters who are cellphone-only and young voters who are not cellphone-only.  For anecdotal evidence, keep in mind that I still qualify as a young voter who is cell-phone only. 

[Sam Spade]

It would seem to me the question is not if cell phone users vote differently, but rather do they differ from non-cell phone users of similar demographics charateristics.

There is no doubt that the 21 year old cell phone only demographic is substantially different than the 47 year old land land owning demographic, but that is not the question..

Pollsters already ensure that young people are appropriately represented in the sample, and that their income, education, etc matches the totality of their demorgraphic -the isolated variable here is just the cell phones, not age, income, education, etc...

IE is the totality of 23 year old males with just a cell phone intending to vote differently that the totality of 23 year old males who may also have a landline?

Gallup BTW is trying to isolate this by doing calls to cell phone exchanges and then askng as one of the screening questions if the cell phone user is cell phone only.. this way they can build up a database on cell phone only users versus cell phone + land line users.

The next issue is VOIP users... but that is another ball of wax

Thank you for saying what I was trying to say in so much more of a sophisticated way.