Telephone polls and decline of straight answer

On a recent drive home, I tuned in to one of those talk radio programs. You know the type – individuals who identify themselves as longtime listeners, first-time callers queue up for the opportunity either to agree totally with the host or to be brutally insulted.

The topic of discussion this day, a welcome diversion from the usual topic of the various medieval tortures to which John Walker Lindh should be subjected, was telemarketing. The overarching theme was that telemarketers are public nuisances for which medieval torture would be too good.

There no doubt are people who see telemarketing as: a) just a job some folks have to do; and b) at times an unwelcome intrusion against which the affordable and readily available answering machine is an effective defense. Some may even subscribe to the belief that a polite, “No, thanks,” is the appropriate response to an offer that can be refused. None of those people, however, called this program.

The people who did call subscribed to the belief that the best way to deal with time-wasting telemarketing calls is by wasting additional time being a jerk. Some told the host they let the telemarketer run through the entire sales pitch before hanging up with a blast of cussing. Others probe the telemarketer with rude, even lewd, questions. Playing dumb – indicating, for example, a complete inability to grasp the concept of vinyl siding – was a popular tactic.

But by far the most popular was to pretend to be interested in the product offered and cooperative in its ordering, but to give bogus information when it came time to seal the deal. If callers to this Boston-based program are to be believed, enormous quantities of magazines, credit cards and vinyl siding are delivered daily to the city’s vacant lots.

You don’t have to listen to talk radio to know that the public has become hypersensitive to the unsolicited phone calls of telemarketing. It is a common aggravation that unites Americans today much as George III united Americans of two and a quarter centuries ago. I wonder whether this hypersensitivity – and the popular reaction of fibbing in response – extends to other types of unsolicited phone calls.

Such as the unsolicited calls that generate public opinion polls. These polls are important, never more important than in an election year. They help define key issues. They help candidates gain the financial support and the volunteers needed to run strong campaigns. They can demonstrate the extent to which lesser-known candidates are clicking with voters and the extent to which well-known candidates are fizzling. After the election, research shows that public opinion polls influence policy makers – that is, Congress and state legislatures – far more than the public is aware.

Polling is a highly scientific endeavor. The techniques of generating random yet representative population samples and of crafting unambiguous, non-leading questions are continually refined. The telephone has been found to be the best instrument for scientific polling, providing the pollster with access to a cross-section of the public that promotes accuracy and the public with a degree of anonymity that encourages candor. And the results of polling are quite accurate – unless, as in the case of Maine’s two gay rights referendums in which the polls weren’t even close to the actual results, people flat-out fib to the pollsters.

So the first major scientific poll for Maine’s Election 2002 was published the other day. It was done by one of the most credible firms working in the state, conducted according to the very best practices. It found that barely one-third of those surveyed could name even one candidate to be Maine’s next governor. Nearly 250 of the 402 participants drew a complete blank.

Or at least they said they did. True, this poll was taken in late March, more than seven months before the general election. But it’s not much more than two months until the primaries and this is a state that likes to pride itself on having the awareness, involvement and other civic virtues that make for an informed public. Besides, two of the candidates are the closest thing Maine has to household names, two others have been in the Legislature, one other was head of one of the state’s most important businesses. It’s simply hard to believe that there are 250 people in the entire state who haven’t heard of any of these guys.

It used to be somewhat of an honor to be called by a complete stranger wanting your opinions on important issues, opinions that could influence election campaigns or shape the public-policy agenda. Can it be that the importance of these unsolicited calls has become lost in the touchiness about unsolicited calls in general? Has an honor become a bother not worth a straight answer? Is any segment of the political spectrum more prone toward this hypersensitivity and thus inclined not to participate honestly or even at all? If so, would this not skew the random sample and produce inaccurate results?

From one end of the Web to another, sites devoted to the science of polling divulged no answers to these vexing questions. I even inquired of the company that conducted this poll and also of two nationally known researchers on the subject. Either they’ve had it up to here with unsolicited e-mails or they’re stumped, too.

Of course, I would not posit a hypothesis on the decline of the straight answer based upon one poll question. There’s two. This same poll asked these 402 Mainers how confident they are that the news media will accurately report current events. Only 9 percent said they were very confident, down six points from last fall. That’s not just fibbing. That’s being mean.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.