another poll.....BUSH wins

Everybody and their Uncle Phil has a poll going these days. And it seems every self-respecting web site has their own poll going!! Even some that have NOTHING to do with politics.
The weather underground conducted one such survey/poll.
www.wunderground.com...

Has anyone else come across interesting and/or bizarre presidential polls they want to share??

I believe all these polls,all the meida attention, the internet has forever changed politics in this country.
Could there be an agenda hidden here?

maybe in the next election, internet communities such as ATS will have some electoral votes

Are people who only use cell phones hurting the accuracy of polling results? The number of people who only use cell phones now -- known as "cord-cutters" in the telephone industry -- has risen dramatically since 2000. And polling stations can only randomly call traditional land-line telephones for people's opinions.

Cord-Cutters Spell Trouble For Pollsters
Knight Ridder News

"PHILADELPHIA - Jennifer Malivuk says she'll probably vote next week.

A Pittsburgh native, the University of Pennsylvania senior is undecided but is leaning toward President Bush. Pollsters would surely be interested in the opinion of someone like Malivuk, an undecided voter in a swing state. But there is no chance they will ever talk to her. She's a cord-cutter.

That's the telephone-industry term for as many as 6 percent of Americans who have a cellular phone but no traditional phone with a cord. Pollsters get their voter samples by using computers to dial random telephone numbers. But it's illegal to call cell phones with these auto-dialers because it costs people money to answer a cell phone. So pollsters call "regular" phones, and the politics of cell-only folks remain unknown.

That is just one of many uncertainties in polling, a field that practitioners concede has elements of art as well as science. And after two national polls differed by 13 points last month, polling is getting more criticism than usual in a nation where some are still bitter over the disputed 2000 election.

"Hostility to pollsters crosses party lines," quipped Michael Hagen, head of a new poll sponsored by Temple University and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hagen, a political-science professor at Temple, said much of the criticism was misguided. The nonprofit National Council on Public Polls found that in 2000, for example, the election-eve predictions of 10 major polls were among the most accurate since 1936. Yet he acknowledged that pollsters can disagree, both in their results and their method.

Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at the research firm Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said cell-only people were more likely to be from urban areas than rural, where cellular coverage can be spotty.

That might suggest they are more likely to vote for Democrats, but much more study is needed, said Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy at Rutgers University. The cell-only issue might not matter too much in polls because these people are young, and therefore less likely to vote, he said.

"Polls might miss them, but also they might miss the election," said Zukin, president-elect of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

A broader reason for polling disagreements is that people are fickle. They change their minds about whether they are going to vote, and they give different responses based on when a poll is taken, how the questions are worded, and in what order they are asked.

One factor that may appease poll critics in the waning days of the campaign: The fewer days until the election, the more accurate polls tend to be. That's because by that point, people who say they are likely to vote probably will."

www.billingsgazette.com.../2004/10/29/build/nation/60-pollsters.inc

Don't forget the original "cord cutters" Thundercloud.

The Amish. Some are now calling the Amish vote Bush's last hope in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I predict the "horse and buggy" get out the vote effort to be full of manure myself.

Originally posted by ThunderCloud
Are people who only use cell phones hurting the accuracy of polling results? The number of people who only use cell phones now -- known as "cord-cutters" in the telephone industry -- has risen dramatically since 2000. And polling stations can only randomly call traditional land-line telephones for people's opinions.
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wow! Thanks so much for the link! We're discussing technology in my anthropology classes and this article's a real gem. There's a lot of intriguing issues presented in the article. Polls have been a problem before (methods and results) and this is a particularly relevant news report.

[edit on 30-10-2004 by Byrd]

Originally posted by Byrd
wow! Thanks so much for the link! We're discussing technology in my anthropology classes and this article's a real gem. I'm aware that cell phones are a tool for mass communications in other countries, but this might be the first real instance of it happening here at such a level.

John Zogby has written much on the subject, and it will all be revisted when the traditional polls versus actual vote gets dissected in the coming days.

The key is most cord cutters are urban. Some argue overwhelmingly liberal. They range from affluent "technology adopters" to quite literally the exceedingly poor that don't have the credit to get a land line. They talk pre-pay on cell phones. It's a huge cash business in urban centers.

But will they vote?

There's also talk that this year may be the year of the internet poll (being the most accurate). As land lines are increasingly busy (because people are on the internet) it may be the best way to reach people. And there's good reason to suspect internet activity corresponds to likely voters. Active, non-passive, news consumers, etc.