Jim Geraghty asks whether traditional phone polling is still viable at National Review Online:
As I've mentioned from time to time, I have a theory that the traditional system of telephone polling is broken. I suspect that caller ID, cell-phone only homes, the general public's busier lifestyle (who has time to spend a half hour answering a pollster's questions?), suspicion of pollsters and the media, the spread of push-polling and a host of other factors have come together to make it nearly impossible to get a good representative sample.
If the way my wife and I handle phone calls is any indication of a wider trend, pollsters may have to go back to the drawing board. We rarely answer the phone during the evening on weekdays, figuring that if it's important for someone to speak to us they'll leave a message. Despite having signed up for the "do not call" list, we still get a decent number of telemarketing calls, usually from charity (one of my pet peeves and the subject of a future rant post), political, and other non-profit organizations. The chances that a polling call would reach us either one of us are slim.
Geraghty also points out that the potentially flawed sampling does not necessarily favor either party:
I'm hearing I'm not alone in that assessment; apparently in polling circles, there's some discussion that phone polling is nowhere near as accurate as it used to be. But where I had wondered if this meant samples were underestimating GOP turnout, a respected Smart Washington Guy recently suggested to me that the polls could be wrong in any direction. The Republicans could be doing even worse than the polls show.
Let's hope that last bit of speculation is not true or John Hinderaker's gonna be ordering Zoloft by the case.
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