Why Polls Tend to Undercount Democrats

[IDemo]

Polls show that the Republicans have an advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. They lead in enough states to win control, and they have additional opportunities in North Carolina and New Hampshire to make up for potential upsets. As Election Day nears, Democratic hopes increasingly hinge on the possibility that the polls will simply prove wrong.

But that possibility is not far-fetched. The polls have generally underestimated Democrats in recent years, and there are reasons to think it could happen again.

In 2010, the polls underestimated the Democrats in every competitive Senate race by an average of 3.1 percentage points, based on data from The Huffington Post’s Pollster model. In 2012, pre-election polls underestimated President Obama in nine of the 10 battleground states by an average of 2 percentage points.

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But the reasons to think that today’s polls underestimate Democrats are not based on just the last few years of results. They are also based on a fairly diverse set of methodological arguments, supported by extensive research, suggesting that many of today’s polls struggle to reach Democratic-leaning groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/upshot/why-polls-tend-to-undercount-democrats.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

[belzabubba333]

1. i figured most dems wont take them

[IDemo]

3. The reason being?

[belzabubba333]

4. Because most polls are skewed no one i know ( and i have asked) does them

they dont (so far as io know ) call cell phones. for reasons such as these but ymmv

[IDemo]

7. Each of those factors depends on the polling outfit

No doubt that polls conducted on behalf of campaigns and political parties tend to contain leading questions. But not all do, and Gallup has been contacting cell phone owners since 2008:

Does Gallup call cellphones?

Gallup includes cellphones in each national Gallup poll. Gallup has been including cellphone-only households in all national telephone Gallup polls since January 2008. Further, cellphone-only households are now as likely to fall into national Gallup polls samples as those living in traditional landline households.

Gallup and the survey research industry as a whole are exceedingly aware that increasing numbers of Americans use cellphones in addition to traditional landline phones and that nearly 40% of households have only cellphones. Gallup's methodologists and survey scientists have studied, researched, conducted test polling; analyzed existing data; and examined the implications of the inclusion or exclusion of cellphones and determined that it is necessary to include cellphone numbers in survey samples despite the increased costs of doing so to ensure that the obtained samples continue to be representative of all Americans. This is particularly important given recent studies that show that people in cellphone-only households tend to be younger, are more likely to be racial and ethnic minorities, and more likely to be transient.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110383/does-gallup-call-cell-phones.aspx

[former9thward]

5. Most people won't take them no matter what their politics.

[belzabubba333]

6. ok

[HockeyMom]

2. Cell phones

as opposed to landlines. Since we moved and now only have cell phones, I have not gotten one single political poll. Got them all the time with the landline.

[IDemo]

8. The thing about cell phones

Is that the FCC still won't allow automatic dialer calls to them, and human callers cost more. But Gallup has been calling them since '08, and some other pollsters are getting on board.