Not all political polls are created equal in this age of widespread cell phone use. Should political polls which don’t contact cell phone users carry an asterisk? Wendy Scattergood with the St. Norbert College Survey Center, which conducts polls of land line phone users, concedes the cell phone factor exists. “If we were to include that – if we had more money – then it probably would be a little bit closer,” Scattergood said.
Poll results released recently by the center show a virtual dead heat in the race for U.S. Senate, while giving Republican Scott Walker a nine point edge in the governor’s race. The Pew Research Center notes that the latest estimates indicate a quarter of U.S. households have only a cell phone and cannot be reached by a land line telephone. “The land line folks tend to be a little bit more Republican at this point then the cell only populations,” said Scattergood.
Those cell phone only users, Scattergood noted, tend to be younger and lower income, both demographic groups which tend to skew more towards the Democrats in their voting patterns.