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I can also see why polls conducted during the weekends are so varied from weekday polling. I get something like 90% no answers or answering machines on Saturdays but nearly 50% answers on weekdays.

I'm starting to wonder if polling is headed the way of the buggy whip precisely because of the proliferation of communications technology.

What people tell you on a phone today has lost all correlation with what people who get in their car and drive to a polling place will do in the booth.

Early on when bells rang and people politely answered the door/phone, polling worked. Now that caller id, do-not call lists, voicemail (how many people really still have landlines with answering machines!), unlisted numbers, cell phones with all the above... etc....even if you can reach them, the proliferation of these "communications curtains" implies that people don't politely want to talk to others, possibly particularly strangers!

There is SO MUCH NOISE in the data now, the filters used to recover the signal are recovering whatever the filter designers choose!

So I think society is headed in a way where pre-polling and exit-polling is going to become relatively useless.

LOL! My wife and I had this discussion last night. I agree with you completely. I also don’t see political campaigns paying for the expense of phone banks for much longer. It gets worse evrry election. I’ve been volunteering for campaigns since I was a kid and I’ll bet I’ve made half a million calls in my time. Used to be you got an answer on nearly every call and when someone answered they’d listen to what you had to say. Those days are gone and never coming back.

Interesting points.

Not only is that all true but now we are pestered by unwanted phone calls for more than in the past.

When they started polling many people still did not even have phones and, for those who did, calls were fairly rare so people would talk to a pollster.

Now it is non-stop calls for phoney viagra, insurance, scams of various sorts. AT LEAST 50% of my calls are unwanted. And when you can look at the number calling, forget an unnamed and/or strange number.

"Early on when bells rang and people politely answered the door/phone, polling worked. Now that caller id, do-not call lists, voicemail (how many people really still have landlines with answering machines!), unlisted numbers, cell phones with all the above... etc....even if you can reach them, the proliferation of these "communications curtains" implies that people don't politely want to talk to others, possibly particularly strangers! "

I have received over 400 political calls this election, including "polling companies" which are usually push-polls (if they say they have 4 questions, it's a fake, they just want to read somebody's talking points to you).

So the question becomes: Are Obama or Romney supporters more likely to hang up on a pollster? Who's most busy? Who ends up on call lists? I do!