Cell phone users not counted in polls (are cell phone users for Kerry?)

The Dominion Post ^ | 10/12/2004 | AP

[the_devils_advocate_666]

CHARLESTON (AP) -- About 1,200 Marshall University students are among more than 2.7 million young Americans who have been silenced by political polls because they use only cell phones.

Pollsters can be fined $500 if they violate a Federal Communications Commission rule against calling wireless phones because the phones' owners must pay for every call received.

That means the 6 percent of Americans and 14 percent of young Americans who have no landline phone never show up in political polls, according to a July estimate by the Yankee Group, the consultant whose estimates the FCC uses in its annual reports on wireless usage. That's more than the entire margin of error for most major polls.

Marshall University started pulling the telephone plugs in eight of its dorms in March and is not the only college to do so. Campuses from Morrisville State and Mount Saint Mary colleges in New York to American University in Washington, D.C., have gone wireless.

By next fall, Marshall's Twin Towers will go wireless and the transition away from landlines will be complete for all 2,000-plus students living on campus.

Dave Spencer went wireless-only long before the rest of the campus did. The 28-year-old Marshall senior abandoned his landline five years ago. So have many of his friends.

''I can think of at least seven off the top of my head'' who don't have traditional phones, he said. Spencer didn't know pollsters couldn't call him. Neither did Corey Strimer, a graduate student at WVU.

Because it's difficult to poll them, nobody knows who cell phone users support for president. In late February, Rock the Vote asked only wireless phone users whom they would vote for in November. Twenty-nine percent said President Bush, and 55 percent said whomever the Democrats ran. But those responders called the pollster themselves, which is not a scientific random sample.

[Guillermo]

My point was, if he's been in college 10 years, mooching off his parents, and is now finally a Senior, he is a slacker.

[Nataku X]

Uh no, college students were NEVER "counted" because pollsters can't call dorm phones as far as I know. And the ones that live off-campus, in my experience, tend to be more Republican anyway.

But, I don't know many young cell-users... young people talk a lot, and cells cost a lot. On the other hand, my parents and grandma and I all are cell-only... and we're all Bush-only. It seems to me that travelling businessmen types are far more likely to be cell-only, anyway.

[RightWhale]

1,200 Marshall University students

The clue is that cellphone users are a young group. They are somewhat Liberal, but they also somewhat don't vote. They don't even keep up with the news and didn't watch the debates. Their world consists of their quickdial list.