Face-to-face versus telephone surveys on political attitudes: a comparative analysis

Several researchers declared that the telephone survey reaches more accurate voting tendencies than the face-to-face surveys. Telephone survey shows numerous advantages compared to a face-to-face one but, however, the telephone survey also has some inconveniences. Among these it is important to highlight the scant quality of the sampling frame; absence of a telephone in some homes and the wide expansion of the mobile phone; low response rate of certain collectives and the overrepresentation of others. There are also some new barrierswhich make access more difficult (e.g. the automatic answering phone) and the saturation of the telephone medium because of the large amount of publicity activities which generate a large number of “unsuccessful” calls and interruptedinterviews. The objective of this paper is evaluating the adaptation of the telephone surveys in the electoral forecasts; in an attempt to see if it shows substantial improvements when they are compared to face-to-face interviews.