Is it silly of me to wonder about public opinion polls (PDF)? Every Gallup poll is conducted by telephone. This makes sense since in 1997, 95% of households had a telephone. Gallup had actually gone so far as to randomly match an area code with 7 other digits. That means even unlisted numbers can be called.
But the Gallup document I link to above was written in 1997 — before the deluge of cell phone usage. My burning questions remain unanswered and they are as follows:
1. Can cell phones be called for polls or do privacy laws protect that? What about the people who only have cell phones? Is their opinion missed?
2. How do they avoid calling businesses?
3. Part of the Gallup process in 1997 was to estimate how many people could be attributed to specific area codes. Are they taking into account that many cell phone users move (sometimes across country) yet keep their old number, and consequently their old area code.
So, can anyone out there report an instance (or, ideally, two) where their cell phone was called for a poll? I know this is headier than most of my recent posts, but anyone care to comment, even if just to say “This is boring. Go back to tell us about cool T-shirt sites”? P.S. At the very least can someone unearth the reference in this post's title?
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