I’ve had my fill of pollsters trying to steer public opinion with their b*llsh*t polls - my standard response when I’m called by a pollster is “I don’t do polls - goodbye”. And until I have some say in how the questions are phrased and how they’re interpreted, that’ll continue to be my answer.
What’s especially important is that everyone realize the greater the refusal rate, the more people pollsters have to contact - and I’m pretty sure in order to get statistical significance, the number of folks they have to contact in those circumstances goes up exponentially. So every time you blow off a pollster you’re not only making their life’s more complicated, you’re making their racket more expensive and less credible.
With a bit of luck, if enough people tell them to p*ss off, they’ll end up out-of-business, or at least totally discredited.
We also don’t talk to them at exit polls either. My husband hates them.
In a company that I used to work for, we were required every three months to do a “survey” of our clients which involved general business trends and hiring forecasts and such. There was a deadline date and most of the time my observation was that just before the end of the day, people were sitting down at their desk and filling in the questions in order to turn in the sheets. They never called and just made up the answers.
Could that happen with some of the people these pollsters hire? Nah....probly not. I mean look at the good record of hiring people to register voters.