I don't answer telephone polls at work or at home. Period.
Same thing with any internet based polls asking for personal contact information. No, thanks.
I used to make a little bit of extra money by registering with a company that paid me to come in and give my honest opinion of various product marketing concepts.
Participants were heavily screened prior to being invited to any particular “poll”.
In my short stint as a volunteer at my local Republican Party HQ, I was the one asking the questions. I was not impressed by the quality of the contact lists, nor the attitude of their call center manager. She lied like a Union Boss.
The primary goal was obviously to identify potential financial donors.
After this election, I WILL change my political party affiliation to “Independent”.
Focus groups, yes. I was a regular once, but they haven't been calling lately. You know what I discovered? The market research company was located on the third or fourth floor of a narrow city building. As we, the participants, collected our tax free cash, ate the cookies and chocolates and boarded the elevator down, I was hearing from my fellow opinion givers their true opinions, as often as not contradicting the opinions which they expressed in that room upstairs with a two way mirror wall and the microphones in the ceiling..
In the Hugh Hewitt show he had a guest come on and explain that pollsters are only getting a fraction of responses that they did in 2008. In particular, Pew had a 9% response rate. I googled 2008 response rates and the first pollster that came up had a 38% response rate. That’s only 1/4th of the total.
Take a look here: http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog