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Even the method of contact would skew toward people who have a means for the method of contact or location. Cell phones might include less seniors. Questioning people walking into Whole Foods is going to give you a different set than people walking into Cracker Barrel.

If the source set of names and numbers is truly representative, I think random calling could work if you make sure to include "did not response" as a line item. Then you might get something like:

> 45% Biden, 39% Trump, 1% Jorgensen, %15 ???

With the no-response removed you get a skewed:

> 52% Biden, 45% Trump, 1.1% Jorgensen



I suspect "did not respond" is already more than 15% and increasing constantly. I could easily see it already being 50%+. Even a layman would know to be suspicious of "12% Biden, 11% Trump, 77% No Response".

I can't even tell you if a pollster called me... I'm getting about half-a-dozen calls a day from rando numbers that want to refinance my nonexistent student loans or talk to me about my home's nonexistent warrantee. I went to permanent do-not-disturb months before the election was even in the news. If you don't leave me a voice message I don't even know you exist; if you do leave me a voice message you've got about 3 seconds to convince me you're not a spammer before it's trashed.


The “no response” is actually more like 80-90%. See: https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-editors/special-...




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