How reliable are the polls?

By Ron Beasley

After being tied a few days ago Obama has taken the lead once again in the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll 46 to 43 percent.  But how reliable are those numbers?  Obama's strength has been among younger voters so what if the polls are weighted to older voters?  Pollsters only call land lines not cell phones.  There has been a steady move away from land lines to cell only.  The younger you are the more likely you are to have made the move.

• More than one in three adults aged 25-29 years (34.5%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. Nearly 31% of adults aged 18-24 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 15.5% for adults aged 30-44 years; 8.0% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.2% for adults aged 65 years and over.

So the pollsters are missing one third of the voters between 18 and 29 and a sixth of voters between 30 and 44.   The older people most likely to be influenced by McCain's coded racial advertisements are being polled while those least likely are not.  Of course it may not matter.  Young people often talk the talk but often don't walk the walk - to the polls.

Comments

[Kirkrrt]

I haven't seen it myself, but a friend of mine with connections to Emory University's poli-sci department tells me their model of the popular vote has Obama ahead by a 3 to 1 margin.

This model has been extremely accurate in the last several elections.