Perhaps the best way to think about public opinion and its relationship to politics and policymaking is that the American public is typically short on facts, but often long on judgment.
The latest study of Pew Research Center election surveys analyzes the effects of conducting both landline and cell phone interviews. While the addition of cell phones had at most a modest effect on estimates of candidate support in individual surveys, when looked at in the aggregate clear patterns emerge.
The landline-less are different from regular telephone users in many of their opinions and their numbers are growing fast. Can survey researchers meet this challenge?