Automated polls are like fast food: Cheap and easy, but not always nutritious.

That was the take of polling expert Tom Guterbock, a sociology professor and director of the Center for Survey Research at the University of Virginia.

Though Interactive Voice Response, or IVR polling, has been around for a while, Guterbock said it's really taken off in this election cycle.

In North Carolina, Raleigh firm Public Policy Polling and national pollsters SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports have used IVR to poll in the presidential primary and the Senate and gubernatorial races.

Guterbock raised several concerns about IVR: 1) Pollsters can't verify who answered the phone. 2) Issues must be simplified for touch-tone answers. 3) It can't handle complex responses.

On the other hand, IVR polling can be more accurate on sensitive questions where respondents may be afraid to tell the truth, such as teen smoking. And on "horse-race" polls about candidates, he said complexity is not as much of an issue.

"In polling, we're always debating the trade-off in quality of information versus the cost of gathering it," he said. "IVR is far lower in cost and gives reasonably accurate information, but very few people think it gives more accurate information than regular polling."

Overall, he said "the jury is still out."