From Dan, who counsels, “Let’s render them meaningless, instead of instruments of propaganda.”
Me, I’m glad to say I’ve been doing my part for years — though out of laziness, admittedly, rather than in the service of some higher ideological calling. In fact, Rasmussen phoned the other day, and I told the automated lady asking the questions that I’d love to help, but that just then wasn’t a particularly good time as I was in the process of disposing of several bodies, and I was running out of Glad Flex bags.
When she continued to ask questions anyway, or demand I press certain numbers, I simply hung up on the robotic bitch.
For the greater good, I like to think.
For some reason pollsters only call my land-line, which I habitually let go to voice mail.
Maybe the fact any pollster who calls my cell gets a brusque, “This is a cell,” followed by an abrupt click!, has something to do with that.
I have only agreed to participate in a poll once. I disliked the process because often none of the answers I had to choose from were appropriate. I forget if I finished or gave up in the middle of it. In any case, I shall not go through it again.
If the credit and equities markets recover by the election, it will only be because Democrats know how to fix shit. Not that I’d let them work on my car, or anything. If not, it’s because McCain personally wrecked things beyond repair.
That’s my prediction, anyhow.
I have never interacted and will never interact with a robot that calls me. And I generally don’t answer the phone unless I know the call is from someone I want to talk to.
Wasn’t Kerry crushing Bush 4 years ago?
Speaking of robots, now CountryWide is pestering us about competing with rates and such of other mortgage companies. Can’t I take a few minutes and have them work up a quote?
Probably has nothing at all to do with the fact that we’re working a new mortgage for a percentage point less.
If you listen to some people, Kerry actually _did_ crush Bush. He’d be in the White House right now, if it hadn’t been for those cheating Republicans.
Actually I think more effective than a blackout is to answer,but answer randomly and bizarrely. Pick the strangest answer, every time. This is a topic that Anonymous should be active in, not hacking Governor Palin’s email or tormenting the Church of Scientology. Make polls worthless, mock the system, destroy the results so that they are just abandoned. You want anarchy and to flip off the man? Screw up polls, that’s where they’ll feel it.
CT, the trouble with that strategy is that pollsters routinely throw out the “outlier” answers. Even if those answers make up 90% of what they get, the result would be the same as if conservatives simply refused to participate — unless the “random … bizarre” answers are somehow coordinated so that the end result is that, say, 90% of respondents plan to vote for Howard Stern or some such.
If they throw out 90% of their results, they’ll be left with a statistically useless sample, which accomplishes the same goal as making the polls ridiculous and untrustworthy.
But the polls are already ridiculous and untrustworthy, and they still pass them off as gospel truth.
I don’t know if a pollster has ever called because if I don’t recognize the caller ID or it is blanked it goes to the answering machine (in the 90’s) or voice mail now.
I despise Telemarketing is why. I work 2nd shift (because I like it) and those worms call when you are sleeping or showering, every time.
Polls are a lot propaganda you can tell cause NPR decided they needed to do their own after that hamburger bitch left them all those monies.
I operate on the premise that if it’s important enough that it would be worth my killing myself to get to the phone before it goes to voicemail, it’s important enough for the caller to fucking leave a voicemail.
McGehee, they are – but only to people who know what’s going on. But if 75% of American people say they’ll vote for Mickey Mouse instead of the top two candidates and hope that the endless resources of green cheese from the moon will pay off the national debt, chances are more people will catch on to how worthless they are.
At least, maybe political pundits might.
Declining to answer means they will just keep calling until they get enough respondents. Lying is the answer, but don’t be so egregious that you get thrown out of the sample, that way you do pollute the data set.
The key to ruining the pollsters is not to deny them data, but to render the data worthless.
But of course polls are a bit of a self-fullfilling prophecy… which isn’t exactly the phrase I’m looking for, but work with me.
My point being, if we falsely skew the polls so that it shows McCain down by 20 points, that would cause some number of R’s (who didn’t get the memo) to stay home. It’d also get some number of I’s to break for Obama. Who wants to go wait in line to vote for the obvious loser, after all?
You can say stuff like I am voting for John McCain cause of how much you hate the dirty carbon dioxide molecules or cause you are against the war in Iraq.
November 4.
That’s the poll I want to see.
I reserve the right to doubt returns from Ohio, Minnesota, and Illinois.
Tmj,
I laugh every close election in IL, watching the really, really late returns come rushing in like a torrent from Madison and Cook Counties…heh. The lasst man who really should have been a Democratic Governor of our State had it happen to him in the primary – lesson, don’t anger Daley.