The Impact of Cell-Onlys on Polling
If you use a cell phone most of the time, your attitudes towards Iraq, the president and the economy, for instance, are not all that different from people who only use landline phones. The big differences between you and that landline group: you probably watch "Lost," can name all the past winners of American Idol and send Tweets to your friends several times a day. In other words, you're younger.
A new Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study finds that Americans who mostly or exclusively rely on cell phones are not substantially different from the landline population in their basic political attitudes and preferences, despite the demographic differences between the two groups. Pew surveyed 2,596 adults in a landline sample and additional 841 adults interviewed on their cell phones.
The study found that cell-onlys tend to describe themselves as Democrats more often that as Republicans (52 to 37 percent) and call themselves moderate or liberal much more often than conservative (60 to 35 percent). Perhaps most surprising, 75 percent of cell-onlys say they are registered to vote.
Since most pollsters make adjustments for age in surveys conducted on landlines, including cellphone users basically increased the pool of young voters interviewed but does not necessarily change the overall profile of their political preferences.
9:07 AM ET | 02- 1-2008 | permalink
