On the question of methodology, we are less concerned about the use of touchtone polling in general — where questions are pre-recorded, voters are called randomly, and asked to press ‘1′ or ‘2′ etc in response to different questions. No doubt this type of survey has some selection bias in that some people will simply hang up because there is no live person on the other end. More importantly, since there is no screening, it does not ensure that the respondent is an actual eligible voter (although realistically there is no way to ensure this with traditional polling either — essentially we have to take the person’s word for it). The selection bias is probably not that significantly different than traditional polling (a live person asking the questions), where people can also refuse to participate. At issue is whether supporters of one party/candidate are more or less likely to not participate than others. It seems unlikely — that is, Conservative voters are probably just as likely to hang up as Liberal voters as NDP voters and so on. Likewise, are people who are not eligible voters more likely to participate using touchtone polling than traditional polling? Probably not. So, we’re not prepared to discount the use of touchtone polling in general.
One difference between this and KLRvu's earlier, ill-fated Morgentaler Order-of-Canada poll is that referring to Dr. Morgentalor as "abortionist Henry Morgentaler " is probably going to skew your participation rate. Morgetaler supporters will be more likely to get angry and hang-up, nay-sayers will be more likely to complete the poll. Hence the curious result.
Meanwhile, Scott has some interesting new information on KLRvu's polling methodology.
