Ishmael started this discussion 10 years ago#56,263
I'm not complaining because I know the "Fault" is my own. I get about 15 to 20 phone calls every day from people I don't know. Some are solicitors for politicians, charities, phone and internet companies, the IRS of Pakistan telling me they are suing me and possibly pollsters. Almost all of them have devices that detect answering machines so they can disconnect before being charged for placing the call. Likewise, since I screen all calls through my machine, I rarely know who these unknowns are unless they leave a message.
Almost everyone I know uses either an answering machine, Caller ID or Both and simply ignore any caller who they don't recognize. So for all I know, Rasmussen ,CNN, Fox and MSNBC could have called to poll me 100 times in the past month and I wouldn't know.I have a cell phone of course, but It's usually turned off unless I'm expecting a call or making one.
So it struck me that the majority of people who answer every call they receive are very likely teenagers, Millennial adults, people with 0bama-phones and those who's businesses require communications. So it would stand to reason that the majority of those who respond to these "random polls/surveys" would fit into one of those descriptions .
So even if we dismiss bias polling as a factor, it would appear that telephone polls couldn't really represent any balanced cross section of voters and the pollsters couldn't actually know anything about the person polled that that person didn't choose to tell them. They wouldn't know if that person is telling the truth or even if they are eligible to vote.