Two Polls That Highlight the Challenges of Polling | Hacker News Reader

Two Polls That Highlight the Challenges of Polling

nytimes.com

20 pointsmjwhansen7 comments

I was really surprised they didn't discuss, or even mention, the primary issue of direct polling like this that seems top of mind to me: that no one I know wants to sit through a poll.

Aren't these just polls of the segment that is willing to suffer through the call? Doesn't that naturally make them more polar in nature, because all the pragmatic folks are busy with real life to care?

Additionally, some people like myself don't really mind spending a couple minutes to answer questions, however I don't feel that any of the polls that I've received are actually legitimate.

Most seem to be political ads in disguise, where the questions are very leading, to the point of being comical. "Do you support Barack Obama's view's to immigration, which may allow potentially dangerous illegal aliens to stay indefinitely in America, and TAKE YOUR JOB!?"

I live in a pretty conservative area, and it seems like these polls are just trying to make sure all the old people get riled up to go vote.

Yeah, the formal term for it is "Push Polling". [1]

The most famous example is probably from George W. Bush's primary campaign against John McCain (who had previously adopted a Bengali girl). I'll quote from Wikipedia:

> Voters in South Carolina reportedly were asked "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll

While it is not exactly what you are describing, you remind me of one clip from Yes, Minister: http://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA

The large problem, that's becoming larger, is that a good portion of a representative audience no longer has land line phones, and refuses to answer phones in general. This type of polling is becoming less and less valuable over time, and will need to be transitioned to digital polling in the near future.

I refuse to participate in these wastes of my time (I have far more entertaining things to waste my time with).

I do, however, make every effort to exercise my right to vote so that I earn the privilege of 'complaining' about results I dislike (what I voted for didn't win, what I voted for sold us out, the thing I wanted to vote for wasn't an option because of gerrymandering (which is what any form of distracting is)).

The key here is a federal law which outlaws the use of automated dialers to dial mobile phone numbers.

That means that any polling firm that wants to poll people via their mobile phones needs to employ a bunch of humans to laboriously dial every single candidate number--and get hung up on repeatedly. This makes polling mobile phones much more expensive than polling landlines, where you can use a computer to try numbers until someone agrees to take the poll. So most folks will not bother, or will only do very small mobile polls, occasionally.

This was a significant factor in a bunch of Republicans getting a nasty surprise on election night 2012. They simply underestimated how many people without landlines would turn out to vote against them.

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