Last July I was polled. It was basically a push-poll for a California proposition, but never mind that. The woman who was polling me told me that she does multiple types of political polling, including polls about the Presidential race, so I considered her to be a reliable source. She was very open to answering *my* questions about polling and we spoke for several minutes about the subject.

First, my caller ID said ‘unavailable” for the number when she called, which automatically means that most people wouldn’t answer, but I did because I was bored. After answering most of the question for her survey, I started asking her questions.

I started with, How often does someone actually answer one of your surveys?

She said she usually has to dial continuously for at least an hour before anyone even picks up. Most of the time, it just goes to a voicemail message which often says something like “I will not answer for anyone not on my contact list, so please leave a message.” Obviously, no one ever returns a call to a polling firm.

Even if a person does answer, many will hang up as soon as she tells them she’s conducting a poll. Even more people will hang up if the poll she’s conducting has more than a few questions.

After I told her my age, she exclaimed that I was the first person she spoke to that day who was under the age of 75. She added that she rarely gets people under the age of 60 to respond to a poll and it’s nearly impossible to poll anyone in the 18-34 age demographic about anything. 

Often when she’s polling for the Presidential race, if a person does answer, they’ll just yell “I’m voting for Trump!” and then hang up. 

I know that good polling firms try their best to adjust for any selection bias they believe is occurring, but even the best statisticians can’t extrapolate much from zero data. If the vast majority of people won’t even consider answering their phone if they don’t absolutely know who’s calling them, and this is especially true for people under the age of 60, It can’t be possible for even the most responsible polling firm to have any idea how people are really going to vote in November.