Because many college-aged students primarily use cell phones, they may be underrepresented in political polls this election season, according to Paul Abramson, an MSU political science professor.
Most polls are conducted through home-based telephone lines, he said.
“Younger people are more likely to be without landlines,” Abramson said.
But Bernie Porn, president of EPIC-MRA, which polls Michigan voters, said the Lansing-based polling firm represents college students as the percentage they statistically vote.
Every poll has an inherent margin for error, he said. Potential errors can arise from biased question wording, administrative error, not polling large enough samples and the amount of time before the election.
“When the confidence level is 95 percent, that means one out of every 20 times you’re going to be outside the margin of error,” Porn said.
“Even though (a) poll shows what the number is, and it falls within the margin of error, it doesn’t mean that poll is wrong.”
A good poll probably would include 1,000 people and should be accurate to plus or minus 4 percentage points, Abramson said.
Political polls are about to be seen more frequently in Michigan through the media over the next few weeks, now that the presumptive presidential candidates are in place for the general election, Porn said.
“When you get into September and October, the frequency of polling will really pick up, and then in October you won’t be able to turn a corner without hearing about a poll,” he said.
“The media will often put out a poll that has been done by a pollster that has partisan connections. Every campaign has a partisan pollster I think most media groups do an honest job in the pollsters that they hire.”
Lisa Fandialan, an MSU psychology senior, said she finds polling data in the media interesting, but places much more importance on her opinions.
“It is important to remember that statistics are empirical in themselves,” she said.
“It’s very easy to take them out of context. As far as data goes, we don’t know how much data they gathered.”
Erik Isakson, a political science and pre-law junior, said even if polls showed 98 percent supporting one presidential candidate, it would not affect his vote.
“It doesn’t really affect my stance on issues,” Isakson said.
“What matters to me now is the candidates’ platforms.”
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