^ Yeah, the internals pretty much erase any worries I had about this.
I mean, look at this. 2/3 of respondents over 50? Am I misreading this?
That's the raw data - and having a large percentage of 50+s in a polling sample is pretty common. Which group is more likely to be home during the daytime to answer a phone? Pew and most other pollsters then weigh the sample for things like age, race and geography. In fact, Pew says:
"The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to parameters from the March 2011 Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and population density to parameters from the 2010 Decennial Census."
The over 50 white crowd is also the most likely to watch the debate. I have a lot of sympathy for pollsters... Getting in touch with certain demos is damn near impossible nowadays. Plus, determining a likely voter is a lot of educated guessing.
/actually, I am a pollster
//who works for a national polling firm*
///*that stopped polling on political issues (mostly) about 2 years ago
////points to the person who guesses where I work.
