Polls & Cell Phones

As of February 2007, more people have cell phones than fixed telephone lines, both in the United States and internationally, and more than two in three Americans have a subscription to cell phone service. However, most political polls still exclusively use fixed telephone lines, and now supporters of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) are claiming that their candidate's performance in recent polls--he hovers around one percent among self-identifying Republican voters--is a result of pollsters undercounting voters who use cell phones rather than land lines. The online magazine Slate argues that this reasoning is fallacious: the cell-phone-only crowd tend to be poorer, liberal, and younger. However, Rep. Paul's communication director claims it is the tech-savvy libertarian youth that overwhelmingly support Representative Paul.

The Pew Research Center has conducted research investigating the cell phone/landline which has illuminated some interesting discrepancies: the average difference between landline and cellular-only samples is 7.8%, but only 48.5% of cellular-only users are registered voters, as opposed to 83.3% of the landline users survey.