Polling, Polling, Polling

It's now exactly a week after the New Hampshire primary. So I suppose I'm completely too late to comment on the results. However, they're not as interesting to me as the fact that Clinton's win was very much unpredicted by the polling. Much has been written about this and I don't have any particular insight into why the polling was wrong. What's more interesting to me is whether polls are all that useful, and whether there's a trend towards people actively working to subvert them.

I have no data, only anecdotes. As with any US citizen over the age of 18, I've responded to numerous polls and surveys, through mail, phone, and online. I remember for instance being about 19 or 20 and keeping an Arbitron (?) radio listening diary for a couple weeks. Even then, I remember my first thought was "what radio stations or DJs or programs do I want to help?" I didn't create a completely false diary; most of what I wrote down was pretty much what I was really listening to. But I did make a point to listen to programs that I thought deserved attention, and if I caught myself spending time on something I disliked -- or if I got mad at something I heard -- I made a point to not record it. And I thought about who needed help: I didn't worry about recording data for shows that were already wildly successful, but I did for things that I was worried would be cancelled.

Why'd I think that way? There are a couple of pretty useful defensive mechanisms here. When a stranger asks you to do something, it's not a bad habit to ask both "what do they get out of it?" and "what's in it for me?" I wouldn't recommend making decisions based only on those questions, but it's worth knowing the answers even if you don't make use of them. So with Arbitron: what did I owe them? I think they were paying me $5 or something, which was nice but certainly not a complete compensation for the work I did for them.

I have used variations on this theme in many surveys and polls since then. I doubt that this demonstrates any particular insight, and I wouldn't be surprised if many people follow the same approach. More generally, I would bet that people just don't care a lot about giving thoughtful answers. After all, this person on the phone is asking for ten minutes of your time. What do you owe them?

As our culture gets more jaded and over-saturated with targeted marketing, I think this kind of thing will only increase. Polls will get less reliable and people will start to question their value.

Does it matter?