Pollster on the end of telephone polling as we know it

Why? The increasing use of cell phone as primary phone, coupled with people not answering their landline phone, not being home, etc.

In fact, you don’t have a home phone; your number can ring anywhere in the world; you’re not waiting for your phone to ring; nobody calls you on the phone anyway they text you or IM you; when your phone rings you don’t answer it — your time is precious, you have competing interests, you resent calls from strangers, you’re on one or more do-not-call lists, and 20 minutes [the length of many pollsters’ interviews] is an eternity.

All of this brought Leve to a somewhat stunning bottom line: “If you look at where we are here in 2009,” for phone polling, he said, “it’s over… this is the end. Something else has got to come along.”

Hey, maybe they can use Twitter and Facebook to poll people. Seriously.

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