John – I’m a bit of a sucker for communicating my thoughts and ideas with political pollsters, if only to adjust the poll numbers reported on the news by a fraction (of a fraction) of a percent towards the way I would like the world to be. Thus, when pollsters knock, on our door, I actually answer them; recently, I learned that you need to be very wary of just what those polls are going to be used for.
“Are you able to participate in a poll, being conducted by the 2nd congressional district?” she asked? “Sure”, I said, “Why not..” The pollster was holding a PDA in her hand and started to rattle off a series of questions in short order.
“Do you consider yourself to be a Republican/Democrat/independent?” – Independent
“What’s most important to you as a voter: Taxes, Iraq, Economy, Education, etc….” – Iraq, Education, Economy..
It didn’t take very long to figure out that the individual responsible for the questions had a very specific bias and intent to the responses, as we started to veer into the “Push-Poll” portion of our interview.
“Do you think government should raise taxes or cut spending?” let her know that it wasn’t a very good question as they’re not mutually exclusive. The government should probably do a bit of both, in order to dig itself out of the MASSIVE pile of debt it’s accrued for itself, that has only been accelerating over the past 8 years. She stated that there wasn’t an option to do both, so we skipped that question.
The next question was “Are you Pro-Life? or Pro-Choice?” Er, that strikes me as always being an incorrect comparison. Why not say “Pro Choice, or Anti Choice?” Whatever.. at this point I’m starting to ponder the motives of the individual who wrote this poll. For the record, I’m pro-choice, not because I want people to have abortions, but because I want the government to get out of people’s business as much as possible. Besides, from a realistic statistic and economics based approach, the best way to reduce abortions is to educate and employ more of your population, not to make the practice illegal.
“What do you think we should do in Iraq? Stay and win, or withdraw and lose?” Er.. are you serious? What kind of a question is that? Are you telling me that those are my only two options for a response? What about “Stay and lose”, or “immediately begin a responsible strategic withdrawal”?
At this point, I confront her with the question, “Who exactly is sponsoring this poll again?” Her response “The second congressional district”. *sigh* “Specifically which party within the congressional district itself is sponsoring this poll?”
A slight grin spread across her face as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar, “the Republican party”, as if it wasn’t readily apparent. She thanked me for my time and proceeded to my neighbors house, content to continue to ask leading questions without any capability for nuanced response under the guise of a “poll”.
The business of getting elected in America have been a relatively nasty process ever since the very founding of our nation. Printing presses would crank out political “rags” that would smear their opposing factions in such a way that even Karl Rove would be impressed, so I shouldn’t be too surprised that the responses to a manipulative poll like this are probably going to be used against half the people that actually responded to them, as opposed to informing our elected representatives what their constituents are actually thinking.
They call the run up to elections the “Silly Season” but it rarely seems funny..
“There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies and statistics” – Mark Twain
