Wireless Only

Doesn't really fit what I typically blog about, but this topic comes up quite often when I teach public opinion. The proportion of folks in the U.S. who are "wireless only" without a landline phone continues to rise, as can be seen by the accompanying graphic.

For an excellent report, go to this article in pollster. The federal report is here.

And yes, there is a what people know angle.  Much of our knowledge about people's opinions derive from good public opinion surveys, but they're becoming more challenging to conduct as folks shift away from landline phones to cell phones or other mobile devices.  Many worry that our understanding of what people think about key issues will suffer as a result, though so far that doesn't seem to be the case, at least according to some recent work by Pew.