Don't you dare trust the polls

Rutgers political scientist Cliff Zukin estimates that landline-only phone surveys miss about 60% of eligible voters. Good pollsters try to compensate by sampling cellphone users, too. (Pew will sample 75% cellphones in 2016.) But that’s more complicated for several reasons: Federal law requires that pollsters dial cellphone numbers manually (no robo calls); people have cellphones registered in areas where they don’t live; and respondents with data plans that count minutes are often unwilling to stay on the phone for very long.

Los Angeles Times, February 9