Trail mix 2: The missing students and poor people
This is the second installment of my “Five things I learned on the trail” series. You can read the first part here.
2. Students and poor voters are underrepresented in polls.
It probably comes as no surprise that polls underrepresent college students and poor voters. Several factors cause these population groups to be undercounted, including their lack of landlines, the transient nature of their housing and, in some cases, a distrust of phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. And I believe that the number of “missing” students and poor voters is significantly higher than pollsters have estimated. Let’s take college students. According to some studies, cell phone penetration among college students is close to 90% (I actually think it’s closer to 100%, but let’s go with published studies for now). And about a third of 18-29 year-olds only use cell phones and VoIP for their calls. According to the U.S. census bureau, there are close to 30 million 18-24 year-olds in the U.S., so if we assume a third of them don’t have landlines, that’s 10 million missing voting-age Americans. Poor voters are also less likely to have landlines; one study estimated that 16% of those with incomes under $15,000 per year were cell-phone only, versus 9% of the general population.
So, based solely on the cell-phone factor, it seems likely that a significant number of young and poor voters are being undercounted by pollsters. And even if pollsters are weighting their results to compensate, there’s no way to know whether they’re doing so in a way that accurately represents this population. The Obama campaign has been very successful in its efforts to register younger and poorer voters – which I saw clear evidence of in some of the neighborhoods I visited when canvassing, not to mention the sheer number of people at the Obama rally I attended, which took place in a neighborhood that was both somewhat economically depressed and adjacent to a major college. Obviously, I can’t prove that the undercounted poor and young voters are going to break for Obama, but I think it’s extremely likely. And these voters may more than compensate for the aversive racists, who may be inflating the number of “undecided” voters.
However, the impact of these voters is far from assured. For one thing, some first-time voters may be deterred from voting if they feel an Obama victory is assured. Another, perhaps bigger, factor, could be voter suppression and intimidation, something which media reports indicate is already taking place. Many such efforts target the poor, including those who may have lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis. Journalist Greg Palast and activist Robert Kennedy Jr. have studied the issue, and believe voter suppression, intimidation and other shady tactics could disenfranchise millions of voters. Fortunately, the Obama campaign seems far better prepared for this than either Kerry or Gore were, but that doesn’t mean some legitimate, registered voters won’t be turned away or have their ballots invalidated. And in a close race, those uncounted votes could make a big difference, as we’ve seen in the past.
