People seldom at home are undersampled... Gallup on Caller ID 3 times

[expatriot]

from Feb 28 to March 1st, wife and I were away from home, me working 14 hour days and her busy with work and meetings. It WAS this latest poll and I am upset I missed it because I have always DREAMED of being part of a bigname opinion poll. So how screwed up is the polling method, how biased is it against people who just don't happen to be home during business hours or the evenings on the 2 days the poll takes place?

[Roland99]

1. Or people with cell phones only. Or people with VoIP phones.

[Captain Hilts]

2. They can control for that.

For example, that's why most firms ask to speak to the youngest registerd voter in the house. Some specify the youngest registered male voter in the house. Young men are the toughest to get, so they try and get them first.

[thinkingwoman]

3. I'm home all the time

I work from home and I NEVER get called for polls.

It's very frustrating.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Theoretically, the sample is large enough to adjust.

If they were used a standard random digit dial methodology such as Mitofsky-Waksberg then there were other people with similar demographics who happened to be home during that interval. The fact that they made three attempts shows that they were using a protocol designed to give the initial group more than one opportunity to participate before they substituted the next selected sampling block(I would expect Gallup to do this.)

Used to do this for a living. :hi: