(will be honest don't know much on the issue - all my computers are now just recovered from a major infection)
I have polled over the phone. I polled for the last election and other elections ( good money, easy reading the same thing all day - every one wants there say and reading the afr at the same time.)
We could never say but we where polling for a political party in marginal seats (at the last election. Also in the past we did another major poll. ( several companies do the research an on sell it - they are all under the same company umbrella in my opinion )
This is how polls work. in every seat you must talk to ONE person in each of the following groups - male and female
18-23 23-28 29-32 this continues until over something like 50 or 60 then the quotes go to say 60 plus group
there was nothing like a sunday morning looking for a male between the ages of 18-23 that wanted to give there political opionion. We would have called about 2000 people to get one. (Sorry if we woke you up..)
Once we have one in each demographics we are then open to talk to anyone.In my opinion most of the polls are then made up of women between the ages of 28-38 - home with children and male aged over 65 - retired
that is what the poles say
if you have never been polled before you will be asked some weird wordy statement like the following
who do you think is best at managing climate change? lib lab or someone else
Who do you think cares about climate change the most lib lab or someone else
the world is worth saving who do you think cares more
lib lab or someone else
al gore put out the movie (sorry forgotten the name insert here) which party do you think polices are closer lib lab or someone else
then the company conducting the poll comes up with a statement like 60% of the public agree with this
in my opinion most of the public will go oh i don't quite agree with that statement - i would have to respond lib lab or someone else. They would respond oh so i have to choose. oh ok i will go with.... Then they will give you there real opinion but that was never recorded. polls only ask what the parties/ media want to ask and it is recorded to get the response they want. Market research is about getting the response the person that commissioned the research want not getting people opinions sorry
the number of people we spoke to was say 2000 each day on the last election - the poll you are talking about would be about the same
