Wierd pollster called me!

[Carl21014]

I missed the organization name, but when he said it was a political poll I said great! He ask if how ofter I vote and I said always. He ask me my religion and I said Baptist.

Then he said, That's as far as I can go and hung up. WTF?

[patdem]

1. Maybe the poll wants to know how often Baptists vote?

[revcarol]

2. Can you re-dial the last number who called you

with that thingamadowhidgie?Call 'em up.

[AP]

3. There's a lot of interest in how catholics are voting.

It's a divided vote (50:50, I think) and I believe Republicans have been making lots of move to cut into the Democrat's 50.

Maybe they were looking for Catholics.

[MI Cherie]

4. This reminds me ...

... of the pollsters who have called me.

Once, a lady said it would take about five minutes. After her first question, when I made it clear that I did not support a certain repub, she thanked me for my time and hung up.

The last guy was not as subtle. He asked to talk to the repub voter. I told him: "Not in this house!" He simply hung up.

Perhaps this sheds light on how they can get their desired results.


:shrug:

[TreasonousBastard]

5. I got one of those , too.

Didn't stop with a religion question, but something about voter registration.

"Hmmm, that's odd. I'll call you right back." And that was the last I heard from her.

No big deal, they're simply qualifying the pollees.

Next time, say you're a Satanist.

[calimary]

6. Or maybe, next time, say you're republi-CON.

Then you can skew the poll!

[IronLionZion]

7. exactly

play mind games with them and really freak them out on election day

[stopbush]

8. It's not always so nefarious.

Often, a candidate's campaign will call people on a party list to see if they can drum up volunteers for their candidate. They usually have a script that acts as a survey, allowing them to identify potential campaign workers and gather a few data points in the process. For instance, if you're calling a list of Dems and you ask a person if they'll be voting Dem in the election and they say "No, I'm voting for bush," you may be instructed by the campaign to end the call at that point. After all, the point of this particular activity is to find willing volunteers for your campaign, not to spend time on the phone trying to convert people to your cause (someone else might be doing that). Other call-ees may only answer 2 or 3 more questions - once they give an unwanted answer, the survey taker moves on. It all depends on the agenda of the survey.

[LoZoccolo]

9. Does this name jog your memory?

"National Research Center"

If so, they could be a Republican push-polling firm named Campaign-Tel.

[bluestateguy]

10. That's the technique of polling

I was called by a pollster on the light-rail initiative for Austin (2000) and she asked to speak to the oldest female in the house, which of course does not exist. That said, she had nothing more to say to me.

If pollsters just polled the person who picked up the phone it would diminish the randomness of the sample. It also could be that Baptists were overrepresented in the responses, and the callers were directed to reduce their Baptist responders. There are a variety of reasons pertaining to the techniques of polling.

[BurtWorm]

11. Where do you live?

Is someone trying to smear Democrats--or supporters of a certain Democrat--by polling their religion or lack of it?

[Robin Hood]

12. I did those kind of polls and here's what most likely happened.

They met their quota for Christians in that particular poll. The beginning of our polls were wide open but as we would start getting closer towards out goal of people questioned, the field became more narrow. We were asked to push for more males or females in different counties or districts, including religion and political affiliation.

This practice is not done to skew a poll, but rather to try and get a more accurate view of what segments of the population are thinking and feeling. Hope this helps.

Basically the computer told theposter that the poll was done because you mentioned that you were Christian and they most likely asked plenty of Christians for that poll.