[EL] Corrected subject line: Question about polling

[Scarberry, Mark]

Sorry for the incorrect subject line from an earlier thread.

From: Scarberry, Mark
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 7:30 AM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] US Dist Ct ruling on Colorado bar codes on ballots

This question is not about the law but rather about political polling. Perhaps our moderator will let me know if this is not a proper question for the list.

There is a surprising feature (at least to me) of the Politico/GWU/Battleground poll released this morning (which shows the President with a small lead). At the very beginning, for calls made to land-lines, the poll-taker asks to speak to the youngest member of the household who is registered to vote. See http://images.politico.com/global/2012/09/battlegroundpoll.html. Am I misreading the poll questions? If I'm not misreading them, then how can a poll reach a random sample of likely voters (as this one was apparently designed to do) if it skews toward the younger voters?

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
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