Why are we doing phone polling only? An online poll can be completed at any time that is convenient for the people being polled and an online poll will not be blocked by my phone. I just saw the email from the union about it showing up as “Spam Likely.” I have received numerous of those calls and ignore them. How much are we paying to have people call and ask how likely we would support something? It’s time to move to the 20th century and do online polling.

I'm guessing they'll say self selection bias. That said, I'm sure they could easily accomplish the same thing with an online survey emailed to the sampling groups, along with the phone calls. I don't mind them calling, they just have to have the ability to call back at a time that is better for me (which I've heard they will do). Just put the number in your contacts and it won't show up as spam.

Exactly. Unless you get a very high percentage of respondents (over 60%) the data is pretty skewed. (Think CNN or FOX online poll)

That being said, there needs to be a way to hit the people like me who send almost all calls to VM that aren’t known..

The phone number is in the e-mail. Make it a contact and it will be known.

The issue of not enough participants and skewing data isn’t unique to online polling. That is true with any poll that only samples a small portion of a group.

True, but scientific polling can take a much smaller sample with a much more accurate result.

I think this might be true for narrowly tailored surveys.

Think "Who will you vote for?" or "What is the thing you like/hate most about our brand."

In my experience, ALPA tries hard, but the polling is usually all over the place with leading questions and insane hypotheticals. There's just too many variables when you're dealing with 14,000+ pilots who all want different things.

Better than nothing, I guess.

I would agree. Only so many questions you can ask on a poll, or so many details you can get into.

The Dalpa pollster is outstanding and has very unbiased questions. The problem arises when the Reps start don’t get the result they expect and start forcing questions on him.

This was very evident in last years polling.

What makes phone polling vs online polls scientific?

They did an online survey. Not enough people took the time to fill it out. They had to extend the deadline multiple times trying to get higher participation.

Phone polling works much better with a small sample size. It’s very accurate.