Ha, it seems I’m not the only one who favors messing with those automated pollsters:
According to results of a survey by the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute in Fairfield, people aren’t always honest when it comes to the subject of polls. The results, culled from interviews with 800 people nationwide, asked participants their thoughts on polls.
Election polls about candidates in particular drive me bonkers, for those I reserve special answers, especially when they all call within a one hour period on my mobile phone and block out their caller ID. The annoying exchange typically goes like this:
Pollster: This is XYZ company, do you have a few minutes to take an important survey?
Me: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
Pollster: Excuse me?
Me: Is this survey about an Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
Pollster: We are looking for your opinion on the 2008 Presidential race.
Me: Vegetable! What happened to the 2007 Presidential race?
Pollster: Er, this is the year that the election is held.
Me: Really? That’s strange. So no one won last year?
Pollster: No.
Me: So George Bush is still president?
Pollster: Yes.
Me: Interesting.
Pollster: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being know very well and 5 being don’t know at all, tell me what what you think of Ron Paul.
Me: Oh, the Beatles guy, um, the square root of 9.
Pollster: Excuse me?
Me: Square root of 9.
Pollster: I need an answer between 1 and 5.
Me: I just gave you one. Didn’t they teach you math in college? What university did you go to?
Pollster: I really need you to answer according to the choices I gave you.
Me: Sad state of affairs with you young whippersnappers these days, 3.
Pollster: Thank you. And same question for Barack Obama.
Me: Oh yeah, he’s married to Oprah so 1. That would also be 1 % of 100.
Pollster: He’s not.
Me: What?
Pollster: Barack Obama is not married to Oprah.
Me: No way, that’s terrible that they broke up. I’m surprised that the news people haven’t been all over the story.
Pollster: Barack Obama was never married to Oprah, he–
Me: (interupting) You’re calling from his campaign right?
Pollster: We are an independent survey company that is–
Me: (interupting again) Ok, Ok. Let’s make this easier. Just fill in your remaining questions by sequential prime numbers of the answer set, starting with 3 and adding 1 to the number every 4th question, and then subtracting 1 on every question ending with a vowel.
Pollster: I can’t do that.
Me: It would go much faster.
Pollster: These have to reflect real answers.
Me: That is my real answer. I did really well on the LSAT with this approach, 20 minutes and I was done.
Pollster: I think we are done here.
Me: Oh, that’s too bad. I really liked the candidate who supports the policies of James K. Polk. Make sure you write that down. Manifest Destiny.
Click.
Other people have different approaches, the Connecticut Post reports:
On that last question, nearly 11 percent of those surveyed admitted that, yes, they had been less than truthful while being polled.
Polling institute director Jerry Lindsley said he was surprised that so many people confessed to fibbing, but he doesn’t think that lack of truthfulness dramatically affects the accuracy of polling.
First off, he said, it’s unlikely that these people gave dishonest answers to every question on the polls they lied on. Rather, they probably just fudged an answer or two.
Overall, he’s confident that the polling results he sees are accurate, and a few false responses aren’t enough to throw the whole mechanism out of whack. “Not everyone is lying at the same time,” he pointed out.But those being polled aren’t the only ones lying, according to the survey. Though politicians always claim that polls don’t matter to them, 77.1 of those who responded to the Sacred Heart survey think that’s a big fat whopper.
Do polls matter? Survey says ….
source: The Connecticut Post, SHU pollsters discover truth elusive, by Amanda Cuda, April 12, 2008
