Oh I’d blocked my memory of Susan testEritch. One of the most annoying people of all time.
I don’t think folks understand how polls happen.
You don’t put area codes and prefixes into a random number generator and call 850 samples.
People won’t be home. People won’t answer. It doesn’t work.
You have a profile. You expect women to vote more than men, maybe 52/48. You expect to have various regions vote in proportions. Dems/GOP ratio presumed turnout in the election. Education levels, age, all these things.
So you start making phone calls and it could be 1000s to add up to the right ratios above. When it does, then and only then, do you look at what they had to say about preference.
If you decide with some sort of justification that there will be additional men or blacks voting than you decided last week, you’ll change that target and make your 1000s of calls.
Then you report the results. You can move the needle by specifying different ratios than last week. With some justification (often $$$ to generate fundraising).