The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted October 15-20, 2014 among a national sample of 2,003 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (802 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,201 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 677 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see http://pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/politics/methodology/
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 2012 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status (landline only, cell phone only, or both landline and cell phone), based on extrapolations from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting.
The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.
Likely Voters Likely voter estimates are based on a 7-item turnout scale that includes the following questions: thought (thought given to the election), precinct (ever voted in your precinct or election district), Q.3 (follow government and public affairs), oftvote (how often vote), plan1 (likelihood of voting), pvote12a (voted in the 2012 presidential election) and scale10 (chances of voting on 1-10 scale). More details about the Pew Research Center’s methodology for estimating likelihood to vote are available at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/methodology/election-polling/identifying-likely-voters/
