These are challenging times for pollsters. With answering machines, cellphones, call-screening, no-call lists and fear of identity theft, people don’t answer their telephones the way they used to. And even when they do, they may decline to be interviewed or they even give misleading answers.
In 1992, Colorado voters faced a ballot issue to deny “special rights” to homosexuals. Polls suggested it would fail.
But Amendment 2 passed, with 53.4 percent support, prompting national boycotts of Colorado, rueful statements by politicians, prolonged litigation and finally a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the amendment.
Pollsters were embarrassed by their flawed forecast, but they had explanations – or excuses, if you want to be snarky about it.
One rationale was that, even in an anonymous survey, people don’t want to seem intolerant or unsophisticated, so they will give answers that might not indicate how they really feel – or at least enough of them will that it can affect close poll results.
Apparently there’s no such delicacy when it comes to illegal immigration. A poll in last Sunday’s Denver Post showed that 39 percent of likely Colorado voters think illegal immigration is the single most important issue facing the state. That’s an unusually high response to a multiple-choice question. Far behind in second place was the economy, named by only 15 percent.
Even former Gov. Dick Lamm, a leader of the drive to restrict state services to illegal immigrants, said he was “bothered” by what the poll revealed. He called it an “overreaction.”
It’s disproportionate, suggesting a fear of the foreign, an intolerance that can hurt a state’s live-and-let-live reputation. But it may have been only a predictable response to a topic that had dominated news coverage.
Three local pollsters, none of whom was involved in that Mason-Dixon poll, all said pretty much the same thing about that survey and about polling in general.
Lori Weigel, a partner in the national firm of Public ap Strategies, found it “quite telling” that people were so blunt in answering questions about illegal immigration. They tend to be cautious about most race and gender questions, but here, “Nobody feels this compunction to be careful.”
“People who have strong feelings answer truthfully,” said Paul Talmey, president of Talmey-Drake Research & Strategy. It’s those who haven’t fully made up their minds who try to be accommodating by giving the “right” answer, he said.
Because the poll was taken the same week the legislature wrapped up a special session on immigration, it may exaggerate the importance of the issue. “Three months before or three months from now, you won’t get the same result,” Talmey said.
After all the front-page stories, a newspaper poll is “basically sticking a thermometer in your own patient,” said Floyd Ciruli of Ciruli Associates. If it’s still the No. 1 issue in November, he said, “I will be surprised.”
More generally speaking, though, are polls still reliable in today’s high-tech, low-trust environment?
“The challenge is getting through the technology,” Ciruli said. In some more affluent areas, 70 to 80 percent of phone calls are intercepted by answering machines.
Some younger families have cellphones only. And even when someone answers a phone, “cooperation rates have been dropping,” Talmey said – fewer people want to sit through an interview.
Still, “It’s not down as much as people talk about it being down,” Talmey said. A 2004 experimental survey by the Pew Research Center concluded that “carefully conducted polls continue to obtain representative samples of the public and provide accurate data about the views and experiences of Americans.”
Weigel says research has found little difference, opinion-wise, between people who answer their phones and those who don’t. And pollsters are figuring out ways to use the Internet to reach people who aren’t slaves to a ringing desk set.
As a pollster, though, she’s careful about her predictions. “We aren’t there yet,” she said.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
