Jeff Taylor has a good little piece poking fun at both the Kerry and Bush camps over their claims of underpolling. Excerpt:

Both left and right found reasons to question poll numbers based on the distribution of technology and the steadfast belief—mad hope, really—that their guy is actually more popular than the dead-heat numbers suggest.

Supporters of John Kerry kicked off the funny business with the observation that pollsters do not yet have a reliable way to poll cell phone users who lack a land line. As the landline-less skew young and urban, the supposition was made that pollsters are missing a deep well of Kerry support. Why, Kerry’s supporters were being underpolled!

However, as pollster John Zogby notes, less than ten percent of the adult population falls into the cell-dependent category, far too small a number to skew polls designed to hit a cross-section of voters. Text message surveys might be needed for future elections, Zogby thinks, but for 2004 it is not a huge issue. Besides, there has to be some real evidence that the landline-less really are more liberal than their tethered opposites and, most vital of all, some evidence that this subset of potential voters are, in fact, likely voters. There is none…

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