Don’t know if this belongs in GQ or IMHO. Move if appropriate.
Re: all of these red-state-blue-state poll results: a comment from a New York Times reader asked if all or most of these polls are being conducted by phoning people’s land lines? How many here even use their land lines anymore, or if they do, answer when the caller I.D. shows an unknown number? This reader wondered if polling people on their land lines would mean that poll results would be skewed in some way that doesn’t represent a broad segment of society.
I know that for polling to be valid, there has to be some randomness involved, although its nature means you can’t have true randomness. For lots of people to have removed themselves from the pool that is being polled (as it were) would interfere with poll validity, wouldn’t it?
Some pollsters only call land-lines, others call both land-lines and cell phones. One issue is that robo-callers cannot call cell phones, so those pollsters have to use live operators, making it more expensive. But they probably get more reliable results.
Read Nate Silver’s blog for more details. Here’s one entry where he discusses this issue in detail: