Polling Firms Weighing Whether to Include Cellphone Numbers in Political Polls
Consumers who have cut their landline connections in favor of using only cellphones still are left out of many national polls, experts said this week. But major polling companies are rethinking whether they should include cellphone numbers in their survey calls.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., raised the issue in a recent interview with CNBC, questioning polls showing he had fallen behind Republican challenger Sharron Angle. “I'm not making this up,” Reid said. “These polls [are] done by random dialing. They can’t dial anyone with a cellphone."
University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato, director of the school’s Center for Politics, said polling companies vary widely in whether they include cellphone numbers in polls. “Weighting can help if cellphones aren’t called, but most of the polling experts I know think it is better to call a cellphone sample,” he said. “With the high refusal rates today, I'm not sure there is any easy way to get a representative sample."
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, one of the companies that took a Nevada poll showing Reid falling behind, conceded the firm doesn’t use cellphone numbers. “We are experimenting with ways to effectively do so in the future,” Rasmussen said. “Evidence to date from a variety of sources indicates that this has little or no impact upon survey results for 2010. Young adults both with and without land lines tend to be more supportive of Democrats than their elders. At the same time, they are less likely to show up and vote this year."
But Gallup has used cellphone numbers in various polls since January 2008, said spokesman Eric Nielsen. “We saw what was coming down the pike,” Nielsen said. “We made the strategic decision at that time to include cellphone numbers in our sample.” At one point, when subscribers bought smaller baskets of minutes, calling cellphones was a concern, he said, but that has dissipated as more subscribers buy unlimited call plans. “From our perspective, there’s not much of a difference between calling a cellphone home and a landline home,” Nielsen said.
There’s a discrepancy between Americans feeling safe on their home computers versus mobile devices because mobile technology is so new, said National Cyber Security Alliance Executive Director Michael Kaiser. “People still aren’t sure how it works in terms of security, how you protect it, and how much information it collects,” he said. “We know people are doing a fair amount of browsing on phones but not purchasing.” The use of cellphone functions will grow in a few years as people become more comfortable with the technology, said Kaiser. There’s also a few reasons why Americans fail to take full advantage of security programs, he added.
Many Americans lack fully robust security systems for their home computers, Kaiser said. Instead they patch together a few systems that collectively leave gaps, he said. The NCSA also emphasized individual topics such as firewalls and protecting against viruses, he added. Now it’s emphasizing the need to take advantage of all tools. “That information is just now getting into the public’s consciousness,” he said. Is it possible to idiot-proof a computer so it’s safe no matter how someone uses it? “That’s not possible and not necessarily desirable,” Kaiser replied. He compared computers to cars, which have many more safety features built into them than before. Cars still must be driven and drivers trained to use safety systems, he said. “What I have confidence in is achieving high levels of security by users using good judgment."
The Pew Research Center warned in a recent report that polls that leave out cellphone-only homes may produce skewed results. In a late-summer survey, the center got responses from 2,816 registered voters, including 786 reached by cellphone. Pew said 44 percent said that if the election had been held that day, they would have voted for the Republican candidate for Congress in their district or leaned Republican, and 47 percent would have voted for the Democratic candidate or leaned Democratic. But among landline respondents, 46 percent said they preferred the GOP candidate and 45 percent the Democratic candidate. “In three of four election polls conducted since the spring of this year, estimates from the landline samples alone produced slightly more support for Republican candidates and less support for Democratic candidates, resulting in differences of four to six points in the margin,” Pew said.