Why We’re Not Hanging Up On Phone Polling

Nate Cohn: “The New York Times/Siena Poll has traditionally been a telephone survey, but over the last few years we’ve experimented with most of the major methods for contacting voters. These include sending them text messages (and sometimes offering financial incentives to participate), sending them mail with financial incentives, and getting data from panels of people recruited online to take polls. At the end of it all, the Times/Siena poll is still a telephone survey.”

“The phone, while expensive, is still much faster and cheaper than high-incentive mail surveys. And the phone still seems to reach a more representative population — based on measures like educational attainment and record of voting in recent elections — than supplementing the phone with text-message links to surveys or online panels.”