Have you ever been asked to participate in a political poll? Do you know of anyone who has?
once. but it was so obviously a biased poll, in that they were asking very leading questions like “do you believe candidate X wants to destroy America and that candidate Y will protect the country?”… along those lines.
My sarcasm kicked in immediately and while it was 100% obvious what answer they wanted, I just gave them the exact opposite. The person calling was getting very frustrated and would even ask me follow ups like “really? you want candidate X to destroy the country?”.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Nope, and no one that I know ever has been. Which is why I don’t trust “the polls” to accurately reflect America. Not saying that you have to be called up to be a part of it - but no one I know has been. So if that’s the case, then they’re not getting a wide demographic.
Alternate is that they show up as spam and are ignored - which again means they are heavily skewed. It means that the portion of the population who is more likely to answer a spam call is more likely to vote for X candidate. Doesn’t seem like a fair poll to me.
That was a big talking point a few years ago. Polling companies stubbornly held on to calling landlines for too long, but the only people who had landlines were not representative of the voting population.
They try to correct for things like age, income, race, etc, by weighting the answers to match the wider population, but it’s hard to correct for things like “stubbornly old-fashioned regardless of physical age.”
Which explains a lot, because the only person I know who still has a landline is my 80 year old grandmother
I’ve been saying this about the polls for ages. Anyone even slightly left leaning is more likely to be slightly more tech savvy and more prone to not bother wasting their time with polls because of it.
Even if they called people with cell phones (and not just landlines) that would still weed out 90+% of voters < 50. Who answers unknown numbers anymore?
I got called to take a Gallop Poll once. I was totally surprised and probably sounded like an idiot to the person on the phone because I kept saying shit like “I can’t believe you actually called me, I always hear about these but I don’t know anyone who’s ever actually taken one,” and I thought it was so cool. This was in 2014, so quite a while ago, so my memory of the questions is vague.
Got interviewed in an exit poll for the national German elections for the Bundestag once and was in a panel survey that had election questions once.
Next time, please put the question in the title and not the body. The body can be left empty in this case.
Sorry. Will do.
I did just yesterday, through Prolific. Got paid for it too.
Yes, I get them as random texts sometimes from a website called Research-Polls. They direct me to some questions about certain ballot measures in the state my phone’s area code is from. I no longer live there but sometimes if the whim strikes me I’ll answer
I only ever get push polls, very annoying.
Once. It took like 15 min and I did it while grocery shopping.
Sure. I fairly frequently get invited to Civiqs polls in email. Civiqs is generally a very good polling company, they ask very neutrally worded questions, but do exhibit about a +3 bias towards the political left.
If you are talking about online surveys then those yougov ones count
I did once but it was actually a campaign call disguised as a poll. they were like, “on a scale of 1 to 5 how do you feel about the governor doing (this) or (that)”, things like using a state trooper helicopter for personal business or something, and I assumed that they were going to loop around and ask similar questions about the other candidate, but they didn’t.
The entire thing was just them telling me vaguely suspicious or corrupt things that the incumbent had done, but they phrased them as if they were questions and wanted my opinion to keep me on the phone and it worked
Thank you to everyone who replied. I’ve never participated in a poll, other than product surveys for credit, points, etc. I’ve always disregarded polling because it seemed so narrow. I’m happy to see that maybe they do reach a few real humans.
Our news network has daily polls anyone can participate in. They share the results daily during their broadcasts. They even ask open ended questions or commentary, and broadcast those with different views.
I do paid surveys on apps all the time to make money on the side, and many of them are political. Reality is people will do anything to make money and give whatever answers will get them paid. Which is why researchers and focus groups should spend more than a whole dollar tops getting someone’s opinion because they don’t get accurate results.
