Yep! that’s me, old and poor.
I still have a landline but only to get DSL service.
We’ve got DSL. ...and a fax machine. That implies a land-line.
I would not be without a land line.....no one I know at work or among my acquaintences only has cell phones.
On what please, do you base your “poor” portion of this vanity?
I understand the point, and agree pollsters really don’t have any good way of dealing (either) with the increasing use of cell/blackberries.
But it seems a big leap to presume those not infatuated with tech gimmicks, make their decisions based on being broke.
The Left uses the landline argument on their side too - say young people, who tend to vote Democrat, overwhelmingly favor cellphones over landlines.
I don't think the poor argument works much either. Seems like the poorer someone is, the more likely they are to have a fancy cellphone.
I keep a landline.
Can you get a reverse 911 on your cell?
Polling on a cell phone would incur usage charges on the recipient of such calls - that’s a big fat No-No! I would say that what’s potentially skewing polls is caller ID.
No land line here. Both sons and daughter’s home no land line.
After Sprint broadband was made available in my area no reason for land line.
All in my family are voting Republican.
We use VOIP, but caller ID shows “blocked” from any solicitations, and that would include people calling to take a poll. During this polling season, I have occasionally answered a “blocked” call just to see if it was a pollster, and once it was. I had a couple preliminary questions asked of me and then they told me I didn’t fit the demographic they were looking for, sigh, I tried, LOL.
I got a call last night on the land line asking for my 20 year old daughter. This will be her first Presidential election and she recently registered. Regrettably, she has fallen under the spell on The One. When I told the pollster she wasn’t home, he polled me thinking They were interested in which local campaign commercials were convincing or not. Otherwise it was a straight up how certain is it that you will vote and who will you vote for survey. There was no apparent bias. I assume it was a candidate doing the poll, but I couldn’t tell who. I’ve gotten push polls before at this wasn’t one.
I found it interesting they called my daughter. She has never voted in any election before, but did recently register. My only conclusion is they are trying to determine what kind of turnout this demographic might have.
During the polling for the 1932 election, the first election in which they did extensive telephone polling, Hoover had a modest lead over Roosevelt. However, as every Freeper knows, Hoover lost. The polling had skewed toward those who could afford telephones.
In the quarter century since then, we have come full circle.
So I guess it depends on which one I use at any given time,to
figure out which category I will be lumped into.
THe poor people I’ve seenhave cells.
My 85 y/o mom has one.
GO FIGURE!
There is much research on landline abandonment. It is a growing trend but not yet extant. And it is true that wireless only peeps tend to be younger, income not a key determinant. It is possible that Obama has more supporters among abandonees than McCain.
D.J. DRUMMOND: "The polls are wrong this year, very wrong." I have been saying this for months, and I have backed up my claim with both statistical and anecdoctal support. The claims I have made have inspired some, caused others to laugh in derision, and brought others to test their assumptions and revisit the hard data. Along the way, there have been a lot of questions about how and why the polls could be wrong. The most common complaint, is that for all of the polls to be wrong, there would need to be some sort of conspiracy, or else an incredibly stupid decision made across the board. Well, I am not a big believer in conspiracies, but I do think that the polling groups have fallen into a groupthink condition. I wrote earlier about the fact that of the major polling groups handling national and state polls, all of them are based deep in pro-Liberal, anti-Conservative territories.
...The NCPP has also posted a list of "20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results", which I strongly recommend every one to read and memorize. Those questions include these very important queries, that I fear most people do not often consider...The thing most folks forget about polls which get published in the media, is that the polls' first need is not to accurately reflect the election progress and report on actual support levels; it's about business. A poll needs clients to survive, and the media - always - wants a good story more than they want facts. So polls sell that story...I direct you to another of my past articles, where I noted the NCPP's record on poll accuracy. From what I see here, if Gallup is having problems, it's likely just as bad or worse for everyone else.
I knew I was old and poor but you didn’t have to tell everyone. You must be a city dude and of a younger generation. We have a landline because there isn’t good reception here. With the iffy cable service we’re throwing caution to the wind just having the computer hooked into that. And with the electricity iffy as well, we have an older phone that connects directly to the phone wire rather than going through the electrical wire. With an electric water pump, we also have a bottled water supply. And I stop here before explaining our “back up” for the septic system.
I’m in my 40s and my wife, daughter and I only have cell phones. We are definitely middle class. I have a lot of colleagues at work - mostly younger - who have ditched their landlines. My neighbors (in the 20s) only have cell phones. I think the “only have cell phones” demographic is younger and yes, maybe upper middle class. They also tend to be more Democrat.
The only “poll” that’s going to matter will be held on election day. Get out and vote and bring someone with you!