The polling mega-firm Gallup has settled a multimillion dollar lawsuit that claimed the group was robo-calling cell phones – a violation of federal law. The result could severely dampen their ability to gather accurate polling information and give a false weight to Republican representation.
Gallup denied that it ever engaged in any robo-calling practice, but did settle the lawsuit for $12 million.
The reason that the law preventing robo-calling cell phones likely will skew polling results in favor of the GOP is that cll phones tend to be the sole means of communication with younger adults and Latinos, demographics that tend to vote Democrat.
“According to one dataset, cell phone-only voters preferred Democrats to Republicans by 11 points in 2012, while voters reached on landlines only preferred Democrats by 1 points,” according to ThinkProgress.
So if polls start to skew more Republican, understand that it may be that the polling mechanisms are less able to accurately report the sentiments of America, not that America is leaning more Republican.
