The Homa Files

That’s the question I was asked yesterday.

When I said OK, the surveyor said “Really? Thank you so much.”

Got me thinking about why the polls have been bouncing around so much and why the many polls often seem contradictory.

Maybe the answer is that maybe, just maybe, the polls aren’t as representative as they’d like to believe.

Turns out that Pew did a study of survey responsiveness.

In the old days, about 1 in 3 people would do surveys.

At the time, that was considered an alarmingly low rate.

These days, the response rate is under 10%.

That means that it’s harder and most costly for survey firms to build their samples.

And, it raises questions about respondents … are they, in fact, representative of the world?

For the record, Pew says that Dems and Republicans have equal propensity to respond to surveys.

= = = = =

Do you own a German Shepard ?

Highlight of the interview was when our dog Captain started barking in the background.

The interviewer asked if I owned a German Shepard.

I asked “Is that one of your classification variables?  Do you find that GS owners are more or less likely to vote for Obama?”

She didn’t think it was funny.

This entry was posted on November 5, 2012 at 7:31 am and is filed under 2012 Campaign, Polls & Surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.