Ten years from now, will political committees, strategists, and news organizations still be conducting polls?

Given the unreliability of polls in recent years — the Romney campaign’s polling is a glaring example, but there are many others, including the surveys conducted in the Nevada Senate race in 2010 — I’ve heard several Republicans, even one pollster, say the industry is in decline. A top Republican consultant with over two decades of experience who’s helping to run some of this year’s marquee Senate races says that, during his time in politics, he’s seen the reliability of polling decline. That’s in part due to the rise of cell phones: Area codes often don’t match the states where people live.

President Obama has also made polling unreliable in some ways by upsetting historic turnout models: In 2012, for example, a greater percentage of black voters than whites turned out at the polls. The ability to predict whether they will stay similarly energized when the president leaves office will affect the reliability of polls, too — and, of course, the fortunes of many candidates.

Then again, maybe it’s not going anywhere. As a top Republican pollster told me, “It’s far more prevalent than its ever been, so it would be an odd thing if it’s being more rejected and yet more used at the same time.”