Can you hear me now? Is my opinion counting?

by Mark Silva

There's been a lot of talk lately about the reliability of opinion polling, because so many Americans have turned to cell phones for their telecomunications, and pollsters are still dialing land-lines for those 800 or 1,000 interviews on which our view of public opinion is based.

But Andy Kohut, who's been in this polling business a long time, has undertaken a study that disputes the notion that there is anything inherently different about the attitudes of cell-users.

Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, notes that "the proportion of Americans who rely solely on a cell phone for their telephone service continues to grow, as does the share who still have a landline phone but do most of their calling on their cell phone.

"With these changes, there is an increased concern that polls conducted only on landline telephones may not accurately measure public opinion,'' he says, reporting on a new Pew study which finds that people reliant on phones "are not substantially different from the landline population in their basic political attitudes and preferences.''

The cell phone crowd is just as likely as the landline crowd to largely think that President Bush is doing a lousy job, for instance.

"On key political measures such as presidential approval, Iraq policy, presidential primary voter preference, and party affiliation, respondents reached on cell phones hold attitudes that are very similar to those reached on landline telephones,'' Kohut reports.

How does he know? Pew dialed 2,596 adults on their landlines and an additional 841 on their cell phones. It found that the cell phone calls did not "substantially change'' any findings.

"There is no doubt that Americans who rely solely on cell phones differ from the rest of the public in some key respects,'' he reports. "However, in most cases these differences are the result of their demographic characteristics, particularly the fact they tend to be very young.

"Since adjustments for age are made in standard landline surveys, adding the cell-only component to the survey substantially increases the raw number of younger people surveyed, but does not alter the overall weight of younger respondents in the final estimates. ''

For the full report, see Pew's study.