How accurate are the polls before an election?

[SpeedRacer 1]

And also, how are the polls carried out?

do they do it by telephone? If so, many people nowadays, particularly young people, do not have a landline, so they're not listed in the phone book.

wouldn't that skew the poll numbers?

does anyone have a link or something that explains exactly how the polls are carried out?

Speed Racer
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[NoShitThereIWas 0]

Accuracy at the polls depends on if you are George Bush with family ties in Florida and a close race.

Roy Bacon: "Elvises, light your fires."

Sting: "Be yourself no matter what they say."

[kelpdiver 2]

there are whole books on the subject.

First off, you want to distinguish between polls that report on beliefs of Americans versus registered voters versus likely voters. The views of non voters is irrelevant, and when nearly half of the registered voters don't show, that creates the greatest inaccuracy of those polls.

So some will attempt to guess at which voters will show up, but their assumptions there can of course be quite off. Only after the election is some really good surveying done, and about a year after the election you can do some real science on how the election was won. (in a close one)

Phone polling definitely undercounts younger voters, but younger voters historically don't show. I think the key to Obama's victory is that they actually do show up. If not, it gets very close in a hurry.

BTW, if you track the results of the same poll using the same methodology, you have information you can put more faith in. But remember the margin of error is usually 3-4 points, which is a huge range.

[alw 0]

http://townhall.com/columnists/HughHewitt/2008/10/02/replaying_1976_with_a_different_ending

For a little perspective.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[SpeedRacer 1]

regarding that link: It's just one republicans opinion.

But my question was not who is likely to win, my question was how are the polls carried out, and what is being done to compensate for things like the fact that more and more people are turning to mobiles over landlines.

Speed Racer
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[alw 0]

The point I was going for with the link was the wide margin that Carter had in the polls vs the low margin of win.

The other consideration than cell phones is how the polls are conducted. Case in point is that if a polster calls and the person answering does not want to do a poll they skip them. It may be possible that large demographics are not given to taking polls.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.