I asked my Generation X sons if all their friends have home phones

at our Mothers' Day dinner a couple of weeks ago.

I've thought the poll numbers might be underestimating the Kerry vote because of use of cell phones in place of land lines in a younger age demographic.

Both kids said that, indeed, several of their friends have let their land lines go, and use only their cell phones. I've seen the same thing with the kids who work for us.

It's often for economic reasons that they have to let their home phones go.

Meanwhile, they said that their friends (these kids are urban and in their 30's) feel no compulsion to answer a phone just because it's ringing.

I, myself, have finally learned that, but I used to have a neighbor who would phone me and if I didn't answer, she'd charge across the yard and bang on my door, saying that she knew I was home because my car was there!

So I'm kind of suggesting that changing ideas about phone use may be affecting poll results.

Another demographic change could be that urban working folks who may have a soccer game or meeting four nights a week, may be less likely to answer their phones than rural folks who may stay closer to home. Young people often leave rural areas looking for work, while their parents and grandparents are still there.

We noticed when our company advertised in Dog Fancy magazine that the huge majority of people who responded to our ad were from small towns or rural areas, often in the Midwest.

We wondered if there were more ladies who had time to read magazines in those places than there might be in an urban environment.

Incidentally, they answered the ad by mail instead of by internet, indicating they didn't have - - or use - - internet access.

Anyway, these might be some issues that show Kerry's numbers a little lower than we'd expect.

Surveys using phones have always missed at least 5% of the population -- those who don't have phones at all. Phone surveys, by nature, are skewed towards the wealthier people, because they are also more likely to have multiple lines.

And now cell phones -- many young people, especially college students who move a lot, use them as their primary phones.

I just took a class on social science research methods, so I read about all this. Your theory, about phones at least, is indeed supported by data! :-)

I don't know about the magazine -- that is probably a reflection of the fact that breeding dogs is more of a country activity, maybe? It seems it would be harder in urban areas . . . I think a better test might be to look at subscriptions to general interest magazines, if you really wanted to know where they read more magazines overall.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

though recently my daughter did and it was a pollster. When I was asked if Kerry was too liberal, i got to day, "He's not liberal enuf." It actually was alot of fun, my daughter put the call on the speaker phone, and helped me (by signs) with the answer. By the end of the conversation, the person on the phone was filling in some of the nonsense with "blah, blah, blah" and referring to Bu$h as "W." It made me want to answer the phone more

wonder what the demographics are on this? its getting more popular. never get bothered by pesky telemarketers, they don't know i exist.

then again maybe i don't??? LOL.

I have a land phone but only for DSL and fax purposes. I don't answer it and rarely even check the auto voice mail that is attached via my home fax machine.

My guess is that phone surveys are becoming almost worthless (and I do think it likely swings to the right in terms of the resultant bias-- which can only be good news for us).

I guess the polling center at my college, is an exception. I have in the past called many cell phone voice messaging systems, and people who said they were on their celll phone. Maybe the national polling centers (Gallup, Zogby, Survey USA etc..) have filters to take out cell phone numbers.

We still have a land line, but mostly because our cell phone reception is not great from our house. We're babyboomers, not GenX. I doubt we'll still have a land line in 5 years, though.