2Way back in June of 2006 I did a post on automated telephone surveys. These are telephone surveys that use RDD samples to initiate calls to households and then try to administer an IVR survey. Not humans involved. The leading practitioner of this approach is Survey USA, a company that spends a good deal of time claiming that what they do is just as scientific and as reliable as traditional phone surveys with those pesky interviewers.
Well, one of the Newsweek bloggers has looked at the recent Pennsylvania Democratic Primary polls and made some pretty interesting comparisons. The various polls show the Clinton lead over Obama like this:
Survey USA 18%
American Research Group 15%
Quinnipiac 6%
Rasmussen 5%
Public Policy Polling 3%
This is worth watching for a whole lot of reasons.