[lbo-talk] gender and polling stuff

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Oct 19 15:24:41 PDT 2004


Jim Westrich wrote:


>Could I add a smallish critique to your list? One of the things I notice in
>looking at random digit dialing surveys/polls is that women answer
>the phone by
>a 2 to 1 margin (after all, answering the phone is housework and
>women still do
>a disproportionate share of housework). Now, I am sure they
>reweight by gender
>but that would definitely increase the margin of error for men (by
>weighting the
>responses they do get more). There seems to me to be a small bias
>toward Kerry
>in that (the men who actually do answer the phone would be more likely Kerry
>supporters).

If the "wrong" kind of person answers the phone, they often ask for the "right" kind. I'd ask in more detail, but I'm sorta in the doghouse with the pollster world for my Gallup lese majeste.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list