Polling

[superpatriotman]

Has anyone here been polled about the primaries by Democrats?

No one I know or have asked has been polled.

I would like to make my opinion known so that I could see candidates I am interested in participate in the debates.

[thesquanderer]

1. Any poll you can volunteer for is not a legitimate scientific poll.

If you want to make your preference known, you have to hope to be randomly contacted.

Sample sizes are very small compared to the total population (though enough for whatever level of statistical accuracy they profess to have, i.e. margin of error). So the odds of being polled are likewise small.

[SouthernProgressive]

9. Polls that use volunteer samples can be scientific.

It's not a matter of being scientific or not. Maybe you meant to use a different word.

[thesquanderer]

10. You cannot volunteer to be in a poll and have that poll be scientific.

But as I also added in my post #8, you can volunteer to be in a pool from which respondents may be drawn. You still cannot volunteer to be in a specific poll, though, and have that poll be legitimate.

[SouthernProgressive]

11. "You cannot volunteer to be in a poll and have that poll be scientific."

You actually can. Specially if it is an ongoing situation. Some really good polls do just that.

Again, it's not a mater of being scientific or not. Many really good polls use large and ongoing groups of people who initially signed up.

[wyldwolf]

2. I was polled twice in 2004. Once in 2008

But not since.

[crazytown]

3. No doubt, after you nominated Dennis Kucinich for the 3rd time,

they struck you off the list

[wyldwolf]

5. LOL. One was a state poll '04.

My wife got polled in '16.

[PDittie]

4. I'm a YouGov member

and get polled on a regular basis (at least once a month).

[brooklynite]

6. Polling looks for representative populations...people who want to be polled aren't representative.

[Thekaspervote]

7. Yes, I have

[thesquanderer]

8. Some advice to increase your chance of being polled...

...is here in this story about an email Tulsi Gabbard's campaign sent out:

The email also listed “ways you can increase your chances of being selected for a debate-qualifying poll.” It encouraged supporters to fill out surveys from the online polling firms Survey Monkey and YouGov in an effort to be selected for their presidential primary polls.

Doug Rivers, YouGov’s chief scientist, said in an email that he and his team were aware of messages like the one sent by the Gabbard campaign. But he said the company’s systems made it extremely unlikely that a newly registered respondent would be surveyed in a qualifying poll. Even then, he said, there would be too few new panelists to skew the results.

A spokeswoman for Survey Monkey said it randomly selects its respondents and prevents those selected from responding multiple times.

from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/politics/next-democratic-debate-candidates.html

[MineralMan]

12. Not this year.

I have in previous election years, though. Never, however, have I been polled "by Democrats." I didn't know the Party did its own polling.

[highplainsdem]

13. I used to get calls about both local and national polls years ago when I had a landline and a

listed number..

Now I have only a cell phone (got tired of paying for the landline when my family and friends all called my cell), and I don't answer any calls from numbers I don't recognize. Haven't been polled since.

My guess is that's true of a lot of people here.