When I studied poli sci, when dinosaurs walked the earth, poll companies would pursue their quarry almost to the ends of the earth in order to keep the result scientific. Now it’s who answers the phone?
It's great stuff ~ much better than the old personal interview stuff ~ but the problem is there's been a disaster. They call it CALLER ID and when you see who is calling you decide whether or not you want to answer.
As a consequence actual responses as a percentage of attempts have fallen in the toilet.
This is the reason the polling companies and universities haven't been all that excited about explaining or changing or even dealing with the questions folks raise about what they call 'overpolling' ~ like when you are up to your neck in alligators who cares whether it's puppies or chickens being tossed in to feed the critters.
BTW, several months back I realized that I'd been contacted by 5 separate polling companies ~ as shown on my caller ID list ~ and I didn't call a single one of them back.
So, how random a system is the random dialer process? Might have something to do with my having a name that's something like the 58,000 or so most common name in America ~ they want to get diversity so they always select for us ~ and not MR JONES