Comments on: Silly poll http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/11/06/silly-poll/ Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:18:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: JMB http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/11/06/silly-poll/#comment-302101 JMB Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:20:31 +0000 http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/11/06/silly-poll/#comment-302101 Nice point, Steven. One might also mention that it is a long, long time before the election. Nice point, Steven. One might also mention that it is a long, long time before the election.

]]> By: Steven Den Beste http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/11/06/silly-poll/#comment-302099 Steven Den Beste Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:32:29 +0000 http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2007/11/06/silly-poll/#comment-302099 As time goes on, telephone polls are increasingly inaccurate anyway. A surprising percentage of the population now has no landline, and relies exclusively on cell phones. It's against the law to make unsolicited commercial calls to cell phones, and that includes pollsters. And there are also a lot of people who hang up on pollsters when they call. It's not clear that the subset of the population which have landlines and are willing to waste ten minutes answering silly questions are representative of the population as a whole, but the evidence is that increasingly they are not. As time goes on, telephone polls are increasingly inaccurate anyway. A surprising percentage of the population now has no landline, and relies exclusively on cell phones. It’s against the law to make unsolicited commercial calls to cell phones, and that includes pollsters.

And there are also a lot of people who hang up on pollsters when they call. It’s not clear that the subset of the population which have landlines and are willing to waste ten minutes answering silly questions are representative of the population as a whole, but the evidence is that increasingly they are not.

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