The tight Presidential race could be decided by....!

With all the daily polls on the 2004 Presidential election, it gets really hard to pay attention to their results. Each poll uses slightly different questions, sampling size, etc., to make their predictions on who's ahead, what population demographic supports which candidate, and so on. However there's one growing segment of the US population that will not be included in any poll, and that's those who use cell phones as their primary form of telecommunication. And who are the most likely to fit this demographic? Young people, newly registered voters. Presumably many of these (e.g., college students) are more likely to be a little more liberal in their thinking, to be more against the war in Iraq, and to be more educated and pro-active in social and environmental issues. Robert Cringely discusses this in his latest I, Cringely column --he calls this the Diddy Factor, the reason which is made clear in his essay.

Now, couple the Diddy Factor with the extensive voter registration drives targeted at first time voters this year (see Rock the Vote or Democracy for America to name a few). The hope (at least by me) is that the number of pro-Kerry voters are continually being under counted in the various polls. With predictions of an election as close as the disputed 2000 one (where Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College), a strong turnout by the cell phone crowd could/should lead to a John Kerry win over George Bush.