The Dumbest Poll Question

 

 

 

My phone has been blowing up for weeks.

Many calls are for candidates in the upcoming election (often paid for by dark money PACs).

I’ve received every type of political phone call. Reminders. Real polls. Push-polls. Fake polls. Pleas to volunteer. Recorded messages. Solicitations. I’ve gotten many calls from candidates I’ve never heard of before. I guess this is the downside of being a registered voter in 2022 America.

Within the last week, I answered several times, mostly out of curiosity. I did this once back in 2016 when I was pushed polled by a dirty PAC working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the Democratic primaries. I blasted the “pollster” for being deceptive, wrote a detailed article about our heated exchange, and was even cited in Daily Kos (a political website). READ HERE  That’s when my article received something like 700,000 hits. To this day, after ten years of writing on almost every conceivable topic, that article about getting push-polled remains the most widely read ever. I would never have guessed an article about push polling would be so popular.  Like, really?

So, I do answer sometimes just to see where the conversation leads.  And now, here we are.  You knew it was coming, right?

The most common question I’m asked in these polls (some legitimate, others not) is this: Are you satisfied with the direction of the country right now? The wording varies, but the general idea is the same. The pollster wants to know if I’m satisfied with the status quo. Another way of putting it is — am I optimistic or pessimistic about the country’s future?

Well, this is the dumbest, most worthless poll question ever conceived, and I’m about to explain why. What’s to be gained by polling a random sample of likely voters and asking us if we’re satisfied and/or optimistic?  What is to be (perhaps falsely) inferred by the poll results?

Am I satisfied with the direction of the country?  Okay, well, I don’t know any conservative who would answer “YES” to this question, given the current political climate. But here’s the odd thing: I don’t know any liberal who would answer “YES” to this question, either. We’re outraged by what’s happening right now, and honestly, we don’t feel particularly optimistic about things getting better anytime soon. Have you looked around? Democracy as we know it might be a thing of the past if the political dominos fall a certain way. And that’s certainly possible.  Even independents (many fed up with the stranglehold of the two-party system) are probably going to answer “NO” to the satisfaction question.  How can anyone be satisfied, and even if things were better by whatever metrics we want to use, should we ever really be satisfied? Shouldn’t we always aspire to be better, smarter, happier, and more prosperous?

So, why ask such a stupid question with no apparent meaningful revelations?

Of course, the question has become a proxy for political incumbents. The assumption is voters who express dissatisfaction (or pessimism) will vote current officeholders out of office. That seems like a valid deduction. But most Democrats, and certainly most liberals are very dissatisfied with the current political climate with its love of guns, restrictions on women’s freedoms, mass anti-intellectual arrogance, and the political rise of crackpots.  So, when we answer “NO,” that becomes a defacto indictment of the current administration and its policies, which is absolutely not the case.

Indeed, most poll questions are little more than political donuts. They all have holes in them. Even when asked a simple direct question such as, “Do you approve of the job President Biden is doing?” even that’s tough to answer.  Many of us would like to split our response, which can’t be done in polls.  It depends on what we’re talking about by “approval.” Yeah, I generally approve of President Biden’s job performance. He inherited a terrible mess. However, I’m just as disappointed when it comes to other important issues, and I certainly don’t want him to run for re-election in 2024. So, where does that place me in those little checkboxes?

When I have the time to do so, I share these opinions with pollsters. As you can imagine, this triggers the widest possible reactions. Some listen politely. Some probably record the phone call to play later in the break room for a good laugh (you should hear my responses when I find out I’m being pushed polled, or it’s a Republican-leaning phone call…think nuclear option). Many just hang up on me in midsentence.

Invariably, when I ask them any questions, they’re evasive.  Who do you work for?  What’s the name of your polling organization, again?

Click!

Yeah, there’s some satisfaction when being hung up by the pollster.   Maybe if I act crazy enough, they’ll put me on the “DO NOT CALL” list.

Now, that’s what I’d call a political victory.

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