8 ms·

Who replies honestly to political question to random strangers? I know I don't. What's the benefit of letting anyone know where you stand politically at this p

• dillondoyle 6y ago
  Research has confirmed that people don't lie to pollsters in any meaningful way when asked their head to head preference. It's mentioned in the last graph of the article. The crux of this article is rather than 'shy trump voters' there is simply a large amount of these Trump voters who will refuse to take a survey flat out.
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    Isn't trump voters refusing to take polls what everyone means when they say "shy trump voters"?
    • PeterisP 6y ago
      As far as I understand, the traditional sense of "shy voter" is to describe your poll numbers (i.e. the people who did take the survey) which answered "undecided" when they were shy about their choice. This also goes hand in hand with things like observed differences in answers of in-person surveys when the person doing the survey is/isn't from the same demographic as the person being surveyed. A disproportional amount of people (after controlling for race/gender/income/education/etc) simply refusing to answer the survey has similar but conceptually different effect; one that (as the OP claims - perhaps they're mistaken) is new and had not been a significant factor before.
      • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        If I didn't have five of them calling me every day, day after day, I might be more likely to answer. If half of them weren't push polls trying to disguise themselves as unbiased, I might be more likely to answer. As it is, though? No. Go away. All of you go away. You'll find out my opinion when I vote. Until then, leave me alone.
        • ineedasername 6y ago
          Those of us who don't live in a swing state don't have to deal with them nearly as much.
          • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
            I wish. I don't live in a swing state. (Though I guess I do live in a hotly-contested congressional district. In fact, it still hasn't been called.)
    • pc86 6y ago
      No, "shy Trump voter" specifically means someone who says they are not voting for Trump (or undecided) then does so, because they're afraid to "admit" voting for him.
      • dillondoyle 6y ago
        Correct
    • ineedasername 6y ago
      Not quite, it's a subtle nuance. The concept of a shy Trump supporter is that they're afraid of a stigma associated with admitting support for Trump. That is different than someone who just doesn't want to take a poll but may be perfectly happy to tell you their views if you struck up a conversation. My own observation is that over the last 4 years, Trump supporters have become ever more loud and proud of that support, not more shy.
      • colinmhayes 6y ago
        But the reason they're not taking the poll is because they don't want to admit support for Trump, right? Of course some are happy to tell everyone, but some aren't. Otherwise why is this concept of republicans responding to polls less just starting now with Trump?
        • ineedasername 6y ago
          No, not if the hypothesis of the article is correct: They have lower social trust & cooperation metrics, and are disinclined to answer any polls. As for why it started with Trump, there could be a few reasons, all speculation on my part: He may be attracting people who didn't vote much before, and these new voters are the sorts of people who have lower trust etc., and so don't answer polls. Personally though, I think it might be more that President Trump's messaging fosters & encourages a certain amount of distrust: Fake News, anything negative about him are lies, deep state conspiracies, other views aren't just disagreements but bad/treason/sedition, etc. If distrustful people don't answer polls, and President Trump has made his followers more distrustful, then his followers are now less likely to answer polls. Just a hypothesis though.
          • colinmhayes 6y ago
            Yea I agree, they need to find a new term I guess because it seems pretty clear that this is what's been happening to me at least. I guess my question was more along the lines of who doesn't think this was the issue? Seems so obvious that his conspiracy theory squad won't want to talk to pollsters. Plus energized dems are more willing than usual to talk. The 1% response rate is a crazy number. How could they possibly think they're getting a representative sample if only 1% of people respond and responding is a choice? If there's any correlation between predisposition to respond and preferred candidate they're fucked. And it's hard to believe there wouldn't be.
  • ihatethissite 6y ago
    This reads to me as being in alignment with the parent comment to which it was posted as a response. "... voters who will refuse to take a survey flat out" is equivalent to "... simply tak[ing] a neutral, non-committal stance on almost every hot-button issue these days."
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Taking a neutral stance to the poller. That's not the same thing as taking a neutral stance on the issues.
  • Damorian 6y ago
    "Pollsters say people don't lie to pollsters" is a bad argument. I ended up on some list and lied to every caller out of spite. These people are effectively telemarketers for corrupt propaganda companies interrupting my family at dinner. They don't deserve my honest opinion.
    • joshuamorton 6y ago
      The important thing isn't people lying to pollsters, its people lying to pollsters in a way that's coordinated with a particular demographic or voting block. If 10% of people surveyed, at random, lie to the pollsters and choose the "opposite" candidate out of spite, you'll actually see a sort of reversion to the mean compared to the actual opinions.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        Assuming that people are lying at random. I would bet there is a significant correlation with voting habits -- particularly in this election cycle. Why wouldn't someone who holds the view that polls are corrupt and biased have their attitude towards answering them affected by that?
        • joshuamorton 6y ago
          > Why wouldn't someone who holds the view that polls are corrupt and biased have their attitude towards answering them affected by that? If your opinion was that polls were biased against your candidate, how would that make you answer? Is it more likely to make you answer in favor of your candidate, answer in favor of the other candidate, or go out of your way to participate in polls to "fight back" against the bias? You can invent a narrative that supports pretty much any activity. Only some of these narratives have any data behind them. As far as I'm aware the best-supported theory by data isn't that people intentionally lie, but that they simply don't participate in polls because they narrative pushed by republican campaigns is that the polls are always wrong. This is, we'll say, half true. What I'm interested in, now that the republican talking point is that the actual polls don't matter, since Democrats are stealing the election anyway, is if Republican turnout will similarly decrease.
  • Fnoord 6y ago
    I guess I am not human, then. I'd lie to pollsters because I dislike the practice. It causes irrelevant news, and feeds into strategic voting. One distracts / causes pageviews, other one lowers the integrity of our democracy. My data can skew the accuracy of pollsters, however little that is, thereby hurting their interests. I am also open to lying to telemarketers as I despise their job. Perfect example of a Bullshit Job.
• gruez 6y ago
  >It's much more likely - no matter which side you're for - that the person asking could have an adverse reaction. Things are just way too polarized now, not sure how that can change, but that's how it is. What? When was the last time a pollster got upset because of your response? Or are you somehow worried that the results will leak out and you'll get canceled?
  • ballenf 6y ago
    How do you know it's a pollster calling?
    • dnhbt 6y ago
      If you can't admit you voted for someone, maybe you shouldn't be voting for them. If you are afraid of your neigbors finding out your political leanings, maybe the problem isn't your neighbors but the candidate you are supporting. If you want to support a specific candidate and everything they believe in, that's just fine, but you should feel comfortable saying as much and, if you feel up for it, laying out the reasoning. I am completely fine admitting voting for Biden, why he isn't my favorite and who I would prefer. I feel zero shame, you shouldn't either. Just my POV.
      • burrows 6y ago
        Yeah, and good people have nothing to hide! Isn’t that right Alexa?
      • doubleunplussed 6y ago
        Being able to vote anonymously and without regard for being shamed by your neighbours is a feature, not a bug, and one of the last protections against democracy being hijacked by intimidation and mass groupthink. I have plenty of beliefs I'm not ashamed of on a personal level, that I think are noble, wholesome, and just, that I sure as fuck don't want my employer knowing. People are bigots. It's not just bad beliefs that are judged harshly.
      • lainga 6y ago
• ninkendo 6y ago
  Polls showed similar results for the presidential race whether they were online or over the phone, so the whole “too shy to admit your politics to a human” argument isn’t a very good one: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-arent-shy-but-polls-could-still-be-missing-some-of-them/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-arent-...
  • 01100011 6y ago
    People who hold controversial ideas may also not trust a computerized system. It isn't just about the person on the other end of the phone judging you. It's that someone is recording what you believe, and you may not be as anonymous as you think.
• deleted 6y ago
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• dan_quixote 6y ago
  Funny, I realized that I've never thought about how I react to polls until reading your comment. I flat out refuse to answer polls regardless of who is asking. I refuse to leave any public artifacts of my political feelings (signs, bumper stickers, facebook comments, etc). The reason is exactly as you describe - I have nothing to gain and potentially something to lose. I am a problem for pollsters and there's no reason to think I'm unique in this regard.
  • ianai 6y ago
    But, given the apparent popularity of social media you shouldn’t assume you’re representative either. I’m sure there are people like you - but we would be helped with a way to measure how many there are in polls. Guessing here, I’d imagine it’s related to income/age/sex/education/etc and possibly distinct subsets of those categories. Who knows though. I’m increasingly of the opinion that opinion polling needs to be closely reconsidered for informing policy. People conflate polls with votes and something above 50% is seen as having something like a mandate. But it seems like a very immature field or being used for way more than it’s worth.
  • onecommentman 6y ago
    Not being a fan of push polls, for phone polls/opinion polls, I have a simple response. I let them know my charge for focus group participation is $200/hour, 2 hour minimum, plus expenses. The person on the other end is getting paid, but I’m the one with the desired information. Are these terms acceptable? The conversation ends quickly. Push polls really poisoned the well...
    • StillBored 6y ago
      I did one of the phone polls about 15 years ago, and after about 30 minutes of questions I was really tired of the whole thing. But the last stroke is when instead of asking my opinions about issues/etc they started asking the personal questions (presumably to categorize me race, income/etc) I told them I was done answering questions and refused to answer anything that wasn't something you could conclude by looking at me on the street. Now I just say "no" and hang up. And thats probably a big problem for them too, I had a few friends in HS who worked as pollsters at the local mall, they actually paid people in gift certificates and the like for the hour they took up. It was all really upfront, "Hi, would you like a $10 gift card for an hour of your time answering questions?". IIRC it was 100% issue questions too, the age/race/etc questions were all later filled out by the pollster from what they saw rather than being questions on the form. So, yah, I'm guessing its a lot cheaper to run phone polls than pay people in the mall to give out gift cards.
• scollet 6y ago
  Fencing like this may be an extraordinary feat. I for one want to engage at a level where the cost/benefit at most allows an 'opponent' to reevaluate their stance. At least, I can understand a thread of reasoning that is alien to me. I understand engaging in a radius of reason. I implore you to build relationships that necessitate constructive debate.
• nine_k 6y ago
  An effective poll should be highly anonymized, like voting, for the same reasons. You pick a random piece of paper from a stack, check some boxes, put the paper into an opaque box with all other papers. This makes tracking the paper back to you impractical, if not impossible. This is, of course, not achievable by phone calls, and also hardly achievable over the internet (only maybe using Tor). This also may make it harder to control for age, gender, race, etc. Otherwise, expressing any opinion (even the most orthodox at the time of the poll) may potentially be turned against you, and there is no obvious personal benefit for most people in expressing their opinion to strangers.
  • esoterica 6y ago
    The problem with polls is that there is substantial bias introduced by the fact that only a particular type of person volunteers to participate in polls, not because people are lying to pollsters because they are afraid of their identity being tied to their answers. Anonymizing the polls will not fix partisan non-response bias.
• swader999 6y ago
  And who answers the phones these days? The ones that do are so rare and unique that they can hardly be a representative sample.
• chmod600 6y ago
  I've come to the conclusion that it makes sense (morally, though perhaps not persoanlly) to broadcast your viewpoint when it is generally suppressed, but not when it is already a mainstream viewpoint. A blue message in redville makes it more acceptable to discuss and is an opportunity for communication and progress; likewise for a red message in blueville. But if you are broadcasting a blue message in blueville, you are just jumping on the identity bandwagon, further alienating the red tribe; and likewise for broadcasting a red message in redville, which just alienates the blue tribe.
  • codegrappler 6y ago
    I wish I could do this better. It still scares the heck out of me to say something that could be construed as even remotely redville when I’m in navy blueville. I’m sure others feel the same way in the opposite circumstance.
    • chmod600 6y ago
      I think almost everyone would feel the same way. I know I would. We should reflect on why we feel more like this than in 2010. Persoanlly, I think it has to do with the moral realm vs the practical realm. We think of morality as a good thing, but it is more about absolutes than goodness. As we bring more things into the moral realm -- who you vote for, for example -- it shuts down reason, discourse, nuance, and understanding. Traditionally, the moral realm is about what you do. There's not much value in society discussing murder and whether its a good thing to do or not; and there's a lot of potential harm. If murder becomes an issue of nuance, people can rationalize it too easily and you get chaos. Now, I feel like our thoughts are becoming part of the moral realm, and that's a bad thing. There's no chance to discuss and learn together if one person thinks that the other is evil. It also means that it's easy for an otherwise good person to do horrible things because they feel that they are attacking evil. I don't meam to say that moralization is new. It has certainly happened in the past, say with McCarthyism, or the Spanish Inquisition. But it does feel like the pendulum is swinging in the direction of everything-is-a-matter-of-good-and-evil. And frankly, it seems like most of this moralization of thought is coming from the left. There's still some socialism-is-evil sentiment on the right, but that was pretty minor this cycle compared with the Trump-is-evil sentiment.
• tsjq 6y ago
  "middle ground" is anti both sides. As rightly mentioned, things are very polarised now. Thanks to hyper-targeted social media content, one side has no clue what is the other side reading & making opinions from.
• hinkley 6y ago
  When I was younger and just becoming politically aware, I recall stories of people confessing that they told their family they voted one way when in fact they voted another. There are very few consequences for dissembling, lots of consequences for being transparent, and in fact the ability to lie about your vote is essentially built into our current voting mechanism as a right. I dabbled in electronic voting for a bit, and the open source folks were struggling with this quality. Being able to disavow an act is called 'repudiation', and many crypto systems have nonrepudiation as a feature. But you also need to prevent ballot box stuffing, so you need a way to assert that John Smith voted, but not who he voted for. But keeping this feature means that anyone with an IQ above 80 can't be coerced or bribed into voting for a particular person. You give me $200, blackmail, extort, or otherwise encourage me very strongly to vote for Hitler, but I can just vote Ficus and tell you I voted Hitler. Some rando walking up to you after voting, or worse, before, how do I know they're asking in earnest instead of with some agenda? I'll say anything I can think of to get away from them as fast as possible.