Several studies by the Pew Centre in recent years have concluded that dwindling participation rates have not reduced the accuracy of political polling.
Still, Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Centre on the States, argues that small reforms can make a big difference over time.
It helps that the sort of people who do not have landlines are also the sort who tend to turn out in relatively low numbers in mid-term elections, notes Scott Keeter of the Pew Centre.
According to a recent report from the Pew Centre on the States, only one state was fully funded in 2010, the most recent year examined, and 34 were funded at below 80%, up from 22 in 2008.
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Many of them, as a new report issued last week by the Pew Centre points out, are conducting audits of the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by their plants and are taking on voluntary targets for emissions cuts.
The newspaper's decline is both cause and effect of the worrying finding by the Pew Centre that the number of Americans aged 18-24 who got any news at all the previous day has dropped from 34% to 25% over the past ten years.
Yet a survey by the Pew Research Centre, released on May 21st, shows that Americans still like business.
According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, in 2010 Georgia had around 425, 000 such immigrants, putting it seventh among American states.
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In a survey conducted last year on behalf of the Pew Hispanic Centre, two-thirds of Hispanic registered voters said they favoured the Democrats.
Only 27% of Democrats support keeping troops in Iraq, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre, compared with 81% of Republicans.
In 2007 only 11% of US-born black women aged 30-44 without a high school diploma had a working spouse, according to the Pew Research Centre.
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As Andy Kohut of the Pew Research Centre says, Mr Bush showed at his convention that he could move the needle, while Mr Kerry could not.
Republicans have criticised the pullout citing concerns over Iraq's stability, but a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre found that 75% of Americans backed the troop withdrawal.
It is heartening that in a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre, the top three reasons cited for America's success are the constitution, free elections and free enterprise.
Some 80% of the 11.1m illegal immigrants in America as of last year are from Latin America, and 60% are from Mexico alone, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre.
The Pew Research Centre's survey of global attitudes last year discovered that most French and Dutch, as well as pluralities of Britons and Germans, think America is too religious.
And yet, Latinos have so far punched below their weight in American politics, in contrast to blacks, who have punched above theirs, says Paul Taylor, the director of the Pew Hispanic Centre.
Moreover, a little-noticed poll, issued just before the convention by the Pew Research Centre, showed that voters do not yet seem to believe that Mr Bush is a different kind of Republican.
In 2002, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Centre and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that over 90% of second-generation Hispanics were either bilingual or mainly English-speaking, split equally between the two.
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Centre, sees a parallel with 1981, when polls showed high approval for Reagan coupled with anxiety about his policies, such as cuts to Social Security (government-funded pensions) and welfare.
This week the Pew Hispanic Centre, a research institute, released a report arguing that Mexicans, who once accounted for most of the illegal influx, are now leaving the country in greater numbers than they are entering it.
And food companies don't meet the disapproval in China that they do in the West: according to the Pew Research Centre, while 72% of Chinese think that fast food has made the world a better place, only 23% of Americans do.
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