CAN YOU HEAR US NOW: UPDATE

Via a Kos diarist, John Zogby polls young mobile-phone users:

Polling firm Zogby International and partner Rock the Vote found Massachusetts Senator John Kerry leading President Bush 55% to 40% among 18-29 year-old likely voters in their first joint Rock the Vote Mobile political poll, conducted exclusively on mobile phones October 27 through 30, 2004. Independent Ralph Nader received 1.6%, while 4% remain undecided in the survey of 6,039 likely voters. The poll is centered on subscribers to the Rock the Vote Mobile (RTVMO) platform, a joint initiative of Rock the Vote and Motorola Inc. (for more information: http://www.rtvmo.com). The poll has margin of error of +/-1.2 percentage points.

The poll also found that only 2.3% of 18-29 year-old respondents said they did not plan to vote, and another .5% who were not sure if they would. The results of the survey are weighted for region, gender, and political party.

The Rock the Vote Mobile political poll was conducted using a sample group from Rock the Vote Mobile’s 120,000-subscriber base. Participants in the Rock the Vote Mobile (RTVMO) platform, a civic engagement initiative launched last March by Rock the Vote and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), responded to this poll between October 27 and October 30.

“The results of this text-message poll mirror what we’re seeing in our more conventional polls,” said John Zogby, CEO and president of Utica, N.Y.-based Zogby International. “Among 18-29 year-olds, Kerry leads the President by 14 points—55% to 41% in our current daily tracking poll—virtually identical to these results. Our text-message poll seems to have been validated by this experiment. All in all, I think we’ve broken some new ground in polling.”

Hmm, 2.3% of 18-29 cell-users not voting. So in other words, this poll suggests a turnout rate of 97.7 percent among young mobile-phone voters! I can't imagine such a trend could possibly hold over the entire age demographic, but it does suggest that turnout among young adults in 2004 will be higher than it was in 2000, percentage-wise. And that's not good news for the President.

Perhaps some of the respondents were ashamed to say they weren't going to vote, and that's why the number is so low? Perhaps. But mass text messages aren't exactly the most personal, intimidating way to do polls, so I don't think there's an embarassment factor at play here.

It does lend some credence to the possibliity that cellphone-only young voters could constitute a pro-Kerry "hidden stash", though I wouldn't count on it alone for his victory.