I'm not on a lot of mailing list or caller lists. Mostly, I'm just on lists from the local library, the local Dems, and all of those organizations that call to come and pick up your old stuff.
I don't know how I got on the list to be called about this particular phone poll, but I was curious, so I listened to the whole thing and I grabbed a pad and paper to take some notes.
The wording of the poll was really interesting. I'm not going to go into detail and analyze the wording. I'll just put it there for your interest.
The general outline of the poll is below the fold.
DId you know the Senate bill will force you to pay up to 8% of your income for health insurance?
Press 1 if you want to kill the bill.
Press 2 if you want to be mandated to buy insurance.
Again,
Press 1 if you want to kill the bill
Press 2 if you want to be fined 2% of your income for not purchasing insurance.
The other two questions in the poll were about whether you wanted to help the cause, and if you wanted to donate.
What I answered is irrelevant. I'm just interested in why a poll like this would get paid for. I don't know how much phone polling costs, but it probably isn't cheap.
According to this website, a phone poll can vary in cost based on the length of the interview. However, because this was a robocall, I'm going to make a second assumption- it was less expensive than a live interview.
What do you think of a poll like that? Do you think that whomever it was who paid for this poll will get good information?
Let's say that the responses to this poll were needed to make a policy decision. Would you trust a policy decision that was based on the outcome of this poll?
Would you base your decision on how to spend money on a poll that was written this way?