Have cell phones made polling obsolete?

[Lanman87]

Now that we don't have land lines and everyone has caller id are political polls obsolete?

Most people screen calls on their cellphone and will not answer if it is not someone in the contact list calling. It seems to me that this skews polls because the only people answer the polls are people who know it is a polling company and want to participate. Those people tend to be politically active/interested. I imagine it is much harder to get people to participate in polls and even harder to get an accurate representation of the population.

Back when it was land lines and no caller id people answered every phone call.

Can we trust modern polls to be anywhere near accurate?

 

[Albion]

Hard to say. The numerous polls seem generally to agree with each other, and you'd think that the sketchy way people can screen their calls, etc. would cause the results to vary significantly from polling firm to polling firm.

 

[tango]

Hard to know for sure. Even before caller ID people still had the option to say they weren't interested and end the call - answering a call doesn't obligate anyone to continue with the call.

If anything the growing expectation that people will support whatever progressive cause is flavor of the month is likely to skew polls to suggest more support for such things than actually exists. I know 2016 was a few years ago now but from the polls back then the question wasn't who would win the election but whether Hillary Clinton would win by a large margin or an enormous margin.

 

[Lamb]

I don't answer my cell phone unless I know the number, so I think you're onto something @Lanman87.

 

[NewCreation435]

Good question. The results could be off if that is the only way they gather polling data