How Phone Polls REALLY Work
I received a fascinating call from a member of the local grassroots community. Just today, he received an automated telephone poll call for Republican primary candidates. And despite Rep. Ron Paul’s obvious stature as a leading candidate, Rep. Paul was nowhere to be found on the list of choices.
So my friend pressed “6″ to choose “Other”. However, even though he pressed “6″ to choose “Other”, the system responded as if he had pressed “7″ and announced that he had been removed from the list. Keep in mind that “6″ is about as far as you can get from “7″ on a telephone keypad. He’s sure he pressed “6″.
Thanks to the miracles of digital answering services, the whole call was recorded. Listen to it yourself here. I wonder who IMC Polling is? Don’t think I’ll be using them in my campaign.
Next time you hear of Ron Paul “polling in the single digits”, remember the phone poll that didn’t count “Other” votes.
Addendum: Others have commented, and I’ve confirmed to my own ear’s satisfaction, that the touch tone in the clip is, in fact, a “6″. It’s nowhere near a “7″. I don’t have perfect pitch, but certainly close enough.
Addendum 2: Thanks to Unconscious, who set this soundtrack to some great cinematography:
December 5, 2007 at 4:49 pm
My story isn’t about an automated poll, but I had a pollster ask who I’d vote for in the Democratic race. I said that I wouldn’t. He kept on asking, so I answered Dennis Kucinich. He answered, “Who?” I repeated. He said that Kucinich wasn’t on his list.
So, I went for Mike Gravel. Again, not on the list. He asked if I had a third choice, and I hung up.
Still, it’s probably best not to put too much reliance on polls, even Rasmussen and Zogby. They’re still only so reliable, and highly subject to participation rates.
Even if they had “Other” as an option, what would that mean? They list you as Other, or maybe even Undecided? Woefully inaccurate.
December 5, 2007 at 5:49 pm
That is just horrible. I even tried pressing 6 on the number pad and it made the exact same sound as 6 on the speaker. And it was definitely not a 7. I really hate when they do this, but it just re-enforces my belief that Ron Paul’s numbers are WAY above what the polling says.
December 5, 2007 at 6:35 pm
IT is true, there is so much corruption even when it comes to elections and polls. Ron Paul is in the top tier and it is these lousy polls that do not reflect the truth. What a shame.
Anther reason we need to get Ron in the White House.
December 5, 2007 at 7:02 pm
This happened to me too, and I posted about it on reddit.com: http://politics.reddit.com/info/628g8/comments
December 5, 2007 at 7:42 pm
The EXACT same thing happened to me yesterday, December 4, 2007. I also received an automated telephone poll call for Republican primary candidates. Ron Paul’s name was missing, so I pressed 6, for “other.” When I pressed 6, it responded as though I had hit 7 and removed me from the list. I KNOW I HIT 6 because I was looking right at the number and made darned sure I did. I am DISGUSTED with these corrupt political parties!
December 5, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I got the same exact call today. No Ron Paul in the options. I selected 6. It said that they would remove my number from the list. Good work, pollsters. Didn’t we learn from the last election that polls (exit polls in particular) aren’t reliable? Wasn’t Al Gore all hyped up about early exit polls on Election Day only to find that he lost some key states where the exit polls had him leading early on Election Day?
December 5, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I made a vid about it, hope you don’t mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whptaVhCtWc
December 5, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Someone made this into a youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whptaVhCtWc
December 5, 2007 at 9:59 pm
It appears that’s what you get for letting Republicans bother you with their lousy automated polls.
December 5, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Vaaaary interesting.
December 6, 2007 at 3:02 am
http://nhindymedia.org/mod/poll/display/36/index.php
I think IMC poll is the Independant Media Center above. Interestingly they have an online poll that has Ron and he’s leading with 65%.
December 6, 2007 at 5:01 am
The internet really is the great equalizer. In less than 24 hours “IMC Polling” has been exposed nationally as yet another player in the scheme to manipulate American politics.
Unconsious, you did great job with the video production. BJ, you also did a service for everyone who still holds the Constitution in high regard. Let’s all keep our eyes and ears open for the published results of this “poll”.
December 6, 2007 at 8:41 am
is someone going to investigate this?
December 6, 2007 at 9:58 am
[...] at B.J. Lawson’s blog there is this entry from December 5, 2007 which states, in part: I received a fascinating call from a member of the [...]
December 6, 2007 at 11:50 am
We all knew there was blatant censorship - but wow…to see it larger than life…wow.
December 6, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Press “0″ to hear the sound of Ron Paul supporters grasping at straws.
December 6, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Typical comment section: over a dozen Paul supporters followed by one pointless Anti-Paul nitwit with nothing to say. Carry on!
December 7, 2007 at 5:51 am
On Thursday, December 6th, 2007 I called a friend to let him know that I looked around the IMC website and found an online poll that did have all the presidential choices and that I voted for Ron Paul and the results showed he had received 80.4% — on their own poll. At that time there were 373 votes cast and by the time my friend voted they had 379. As you can see from “liam’s” posting here - Ron Paul had 65% at 3:02 am. That percentage grew by the afternoon (80.4%). At 4:10 am Friday morning the newer updated chart showed there have magically been 722 new votes cast since 1:00 pm Thursday. For the life of me, I do not even remember if “Vermin Supreme” was even a choice at that time but let’s say he was and he had ALL the votes not cast for Ron Paul. Now let’s do some math! See if you can follow me: With Dr. Paul — 80.4% of 379 would equal 304.
Vermin Supreme would have had the remaining 75 votes.
Since that time, 722 votes were supposedly cast, for a total at this time of 1101. Now… Vermin has 46.3% of 1101 or 509 votes and Dr. Paul has 46.4% or 511 – leaving 81 votes to “others” (please understand that includes the total of ALL “top-tier” candidates). Now get a load of this. Since 1:00 pm on Thursday we are to believe that of the additional 722 votes cast that Vermin got 647 or 89.6% of those 722 votes cast. Now are we really going to believe that?
December 7, 2007 at 7:44 am
http://www.imcmarketing.com/
December 7, 2007 at 7:49 am
IMC may just stay for a generic nobody:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Marketing_Communications
December 7, 2007 at 1:58 pm
The company is actually InfoCision Management Corp.
I can’t say this man (in the link below) in behind it
http://watchdevil.blogspot.com/2007/08/arthur-and-infocision-say-stop-her-now.html
But he has been known to use them before. If such is the case, having this man work against us means that Ron Paul is now a very serious threat to them. This is good!
December 7, 2007 at 3:44 pm
InfoCision Management Corporation
325 Springside Drive
Akron, Ohio 44333
Phone: 330-668-1400
December 8, 2007 at 7:28 am
I recieved, participated in, and had the same results when I pressed the 6 key. I believe it was on Dec 4th.
December 11, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I think you guys are being paranoid here. The recording on the main page never says that he hit “7″. It merely says that they’re going to be removed from the list. You could argue that this would create future biased polls, but it’s perfectly valid to create a poll where you don’t count the non-mainstream candidates and just use the %s off the mainstream ones. In this case IMC never said they were performing a poll across all possible candidates.
The more I hear about Ron Paul, the more I like, but there’s no reason to get paranoid about something like this. It makes supporters seem like conspiracy nuts.
December 12, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I received a similar call a while back (you can read about it here: http://brothersinlaw.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/trying-to-squeez-ron-paul-out/#comment-180).
There is no paranoia from my end. In the phone poll I tried to participate in, there was no option for Ron Paul whatsoever. There wasn’t even an option to discontinue future calls.
hypothesis
http://brothersinlaw.wordpress.com/
December 12, 2007 at 2:42 pm
I got this exact call in Utah last week. Exact same result!!!
This is fraud! I will be contacting the company (not that it will help) and spreading the word,
December 12, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Called them. The man I spoke to said they are “looking at it” and when I asked if they’d disregard the info gathered to that point he said, “it’s not a national poll.” I asked on whose behalf they were polling and of course he “was not authorized” to tell me. I told him I thought it was a fraud and he made no denial. Pointless call, but oh well.
December 19, 2007 at 7:02 am
[...] is the post from “BJ Lawson’s Reality Check:” I received a fascinating call from a member of the local grassroots community. Just today, [...]
January 8, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Exit polls are normally accurate at least to a 3% range. But clearly this phone poll is fraud.