After leaving me alone for about a month, 1 the robocall from Independent Voter Research struck again during dinner. Male voice, same script as before, except they asked about the Florida Senate race too. Candidates for both President and Senate were presented in alphabetical order by last name, so Obama was 1, Romney 2 but Mack was 1 and Nelson was 2.
I wonder if they will call again tomorrow?
Previously: The (866) 540-3140 Mystery (8/15/12) and “Independent Voter Research” Mystery Continues (9/12/12).
- Update (9/21): It seems family members read my blog. I’m told that Independent Voter Research didn’t leave me alone at all — they’ve just been calling when I’m out.[↩]
I’ll ask again, seriously:
Do you really participate when machines call your house? I can barely imagine being interested when a live human calls my house to ask me stuff that’s none of their business. Do you actually spend YOUR time on the phone with automated calls?
Why?
And do you ever wonder about the possible reasons why polls often don’t reflect what happens on election day?
I participate on the theory that polls shape expectations and thus my poll ‘vote’ is actually potentially more significant than my actual vote.
My confidence in this theory is far from complete: it’s also possible that polls can create overconfidence in one’s friends, or increased determination in one’s opponents. But even so.
Well, I suppose that’s one way of lookig at it. But I’s think that you’d (on that theory) actually be risking getting the opposite results that you want.
We know from polling data that Dems answer polls at a significantly higher rate than Reps. One reason for polls being wrong is that an algorythm needs to be applied to raw poll data to compensate for that fact – and the algorythm actually winds up being the cause of the poll result (which is a whole other error in polls).
Point being, that if you answer a poll a say that Obama will win, and a whole bunch of other people do the same, and give the poll the result that Obama will win, then (under your theory) a bunch of Obama voters might just stay home if things are inconvenient on election day – and you’ve just created the result you don’t want.
Unless, of course, you just poll-vote in ways that might have nothing to do with your real vote, in which case, who knows what you might be creating.
Personally, I think there are just too many wild cards involved to make polling an effective measure of anything. Plus it always bothers me how clearly undiscerning the questions asked actually are compared to the assertions that the poll makes upon release. And finally, I’m not going to waste five minutes of my time doing something that wasn’t worth five minutes of someone else’s time to do with me.
Saw your treadmill story. Wow.
Independent Voter Research has called my house six times in two days, each time I ask to be removed from there call list, today I screamed at the person calling me and berated him, his response was to call me back three more time. I started to research who Independent Voter Research is and came a wikipedia link that states its a Mitt Romney company, link below. If I find this to be true then Mitt has lost another vote, I will NOT be harassed by a potential president that harasses its people, if Mitt does not care about he treats Americans before he is ever in office then its doesn’t bode well for how he will then treat us if elected.
Mitt your a scumbag!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Voter_Research
The people repeatedly annoyed me with frequent calls. I figured if i repond they will count my results and move on. Not so, they keep calling, so the only thing to do is to answer the call and give them COMPLETELY OPPOSITE DATA than who or what you are really intending to vote for. Whatever candidiate is paying these jerks for the intel will have inaccurate poll numbers to guide thier decisions.
Polls are important and we have to live with the disturbance, one way or the other.