Prediction: 2008 Will Be The Year Of The Pollster Crisis

Finally, a prediction of my own. It is simply this: In the next year, pollsters will realize that telephone polls are no longer predictive of reality. What evidence do I base my prediction on? Well, other than my 'gut instinct', I'm basing my prediction on the few items I briefly outlined in this post. Mainly that:

• Telephone polls rely solely on traditional 'wired' telephones. They do not call cellphones or VOIP phones (for various reason, some of which are legal restrictions). Nearly 20% of all Europeans have just a cellphone, and I think the US is not far behind that figure.
• Caller ID is in such widespread use that more than 50% had it in 2004. Today, I'm sure that a much larger percentage has Caller ID, and nearly all cellphone only households have it.

Both of these facts indicate that a large number of people are not being called at all (cellphone-only users) and those people are likely to be younger (as most early adopters of technology are). Another large segment of people are not answering calls from a telephone number they don't recognize, primarily younger people who understand how to use Caller ID to avoid solicitation calls. Which of course begs the question, who does answer the telephone when they see an unknown number or "Number Not Available" on their Caller ID?

These two effects will combine to grossly underestimate the number of young people (15-35) who are being polled.

In the past, the effect of excluding that group might have been muted by the fact that their opinions were largely represented by the public at large. However, the more age-specific the poll issue is, the larger the possibility for a huge error. I think 2008 election is the perfect set up for a 'young vs. old' polling issue to finally bring this error to everyone's attention. We'll see.