For Lou Aronson, inspiration struck four years ago during the heat of the 2008 campaign. He listened as his neighbors traded complaints about the overwhelming number of robocalls streaming into their phones—all except one who proudly proclaimed that since he no longer had a landline, he hadn’t endured a single political call all year.

“I turned to one of my neighbors, who’s a political consultant, and suggested he open a mobile phone based polling company,” recalls Aronson. “He laughed and told me it was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard.”

Four years later, Aronson has left behind a career as an attorney to launch Votifi—a company he hopes will eventually fill a void left by traditional survey research as smartphone use continues to soar. [READ MORE]

This more or less speaks for itself on why polling methodologies need to evolve. 

It should not be a surprise that the outcomes of landline and cell phone surveys are vastly different given the basic assumptions about age and demographic of cell phone vs. landline users. That’s what polling is supposed to disentangle for us. 

However, the harder it gets to run polls by calling people, the more the public is going to have to scrutinize the results of polls to make sure they are telling us an accurate story.

Also, the assumption that cell phone users are all young voters on the East and West coast is changing. Those young, early adopters of cell phones and social networks are all getting older.  Senior citizens are migrating to mobile and social in order to stay in touch with their kids and grandkids. 

Read the rest of the story here.