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Unless you've been living under a rock, you're well aware of the doubt in many Democrat's minds about the so-called "Bradley Effect." This is the potential for bias to be introduced in polling numbers due to white respondents indicating they will vote for the Black candidate -- but failing to follow through with that in the voting booth. Less has been made over the impact of many pollsters relying on landline samples to compile their data, skewing the data more Red than a cell-phone-inclusive sample.
Pollster's Brian Shaffner recently examined this impact more closely, and argues this very interesting point:
Second, just looking at party affiliation masks the fact that cell phone only respondents are actually quite a bit more liberal than those with a landline. 35% of cell phone only respondents classified themselves as liberals compared to just 23% of those with a landline. These ideological differences are not completely accounted for by party either. From the table below, you can see that cell phone only Democrats are 10% more liberal than those with landlines. Democratic leaners in the cell phone only sample are 15% more likely to classify themselves as liberal. And even those cell phone only independents who did not express a lean to either party were more likely to be liberal compared to their landline counterparts. Given that cell phone only Democrats and Democratic leaners are more liberal than those with landlines, they should be less likely to defect and vote Republican than landline Democrats.
So the question now is: Will Bradley cancel Cell Phone?