Online Polls Are Rising. So Are Concerns About Their Results.

[Valin]

NY Times:

Nate Cohn

Nov. 27 2015

 

Two of the most important trend lines in political campaign polling might be about to cross.

 

One is the rise of online polling. The other is the decline of telephone surveys because of rising costs and possibly declining quality, tied to the fact that fewer Americans are willing to participate in a telephone poll. Many public opinion researchers have thought that Internet polling would eventually overtake phone polling, but they hoped it would not happen before online polling was ready.

 

(Snip)

 

But big challenges remain. Random sampling is at the heart of scientific polling, and there’s no way to randomly contact people on the Internet in the same way that telephone polls can randomly dial telephone numbers. Internet pollsters obtain their samples through other means, without the theoretical benefits of random sampling. To compensate, they sometimes rely on extensive statistical modeling.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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What would happen to political reporting (Left, Center, Right) if any mention of polls/polling numbers were banned for 2 weeks? If reporters were forced to cover what the candidates actually said and did?