Cell-Phone-Only Crowd May Alter Polling
By WILL LESTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) - Justin Globus is part of a fast-growing group - approaching one in 10 Americans - who have given up traditional telephones and depend only on their cell phones. That trend is making pollsters uneasy.

For Globus, a 25-year-old salesman from New York, "It was a fiscal decision - a matter of chopping down to one bill."

But the rapid growth of the cell-only crowd isn't so simple for pollsters. Their survey research depends on contacting random samples of households with landline phones. They worry that if the trend continues they could miss a significant number of people and that could undermine their ability to accurately measure public opinion. There could be implications for politics, government policy, academia, business and journalism. the rest