09-03-2016, 09:50 PM
The polls by Emerson College are English-only, and perhaps even more significantly, landline only.
With landlines one has an obsolescent technology. If something were to take out the landline grid, then it would not be rebuilt except for highly-specialized purposes. Prime example: after the Second Gulf War that took out the Iraqi telephone structure, the Kurds in the autonomous (and effectively independent, anti-fascist part of Iraq) went practically 100% cellular. Such was cheaper, safer, and more reliable than land lines. Reliance upon demographics wedded to some obsolete technology implies a distorted sample.
Normal consumer use is not one of those specialized uses. Reliance on landlines will soon be as obsolete as using pre-recorded VHS tapes for entertainment. Landline users skew elderly, and hence Republican.People with cellphones only tend to be younger and more Democratic. As early as 2014, nearly half of all households had no landline phones ; as late as 2004, having a landline phone but not a cellular phone was so for nearly all households.
![[Image: 20150226_Landline_FO.jpg]](http://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2015/02/20150226_Landline_FO.jpg)
Even more problems accrue to the Emerson College polls. It is amazing that any pollster which heretofore yet has offered no polls of the Presidential race gives seven in one week. These polls show themselves much more pro-Trump than most national tracking polls hold.
With landlines one has an obsolescent technology. If something were to take out the landline grid, then it would not be rebuilt except for highly-specialized purposes. Prime example: after the Second Gulf War that took out the Iraqi telephone structure, the Kurds in the autonomous (and effectively independent, anti-fascist part of Iraq) went practically 100% cellular. Such was cheaper, safer, and more reliable than land lines. Reliance upon demographics wedded to some obsolete technology implies a distorted sample.
Normal consumer use is not one of those specialized uses. Reliance on landlines will soon be as obsolete as using pre-recorded VHS tapes for entertainment. Landline users skew elderly, and hence Republican.People with cellphones only tend to be younger and more Democratic. As early as 2014, nearly half of all households had no landline phones ; as late as 2004, having a landline phone but not a cellular phone was so for nearly all households.
Even more problems accrue to the Emerson College polls. It is amazing that any pollster which heretofore yet has offered no polls of the Presidential race gives seven in one week. These polls show themselves much more pro-Trump than most national tracking polls hold.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.