Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I’m a data hog and a political junkie - and even I am sick of the polls. They’re up, they’re down. They’re sliced. They’re diced. They’re UP TO THE MINUTE! THIS JUST IN! White women have stampeded OVER NIGHT to McCain! NO WAIT! LOOK OUT!…here comes the thundering herd back to the brown guy with the funny name. The befuddled “white guys” are all over the place. Not to mention that the “minority” vote is actually in the majority in some parts of the country.

Want to show better results for one party over the other? Simple. Skew the sample size so there are more respondents from that party (as Gallup did after the GOP convention; there’s the bounce!) Want a more liberal slant than conservative? Go to a known liberal zip code. And so on. No wonder people roll their eyes about politics.

Here’s the thing - like any type of market survey (and that’s what polls are) - the results all depend on:
1. The question asked.
2. How you word the question (and how you place the emphasis on those words.)
3. The ways you give to answer the question (T/F, limited to multiple choice, open-ended)
4. Who you ask.
5. When you ask them.
6. Where you ask them.
6. WHO is asking them.

For example, a friend of mine got a “survey” call where one of the questions was “Which are you more angry about: abortion or the economy?” What if she’s not angry at all? Guess what? That doesn’t fit the survey methodology and gets thrown out. They will keep calling and asking until they get “valid” responses that fit the survey objective.

I’m probably the world’s worst subject for research - in any survey, no matter how well written, a good portion of the answer choices given don’t fit my views. “Can I say 4.25?” or “What about 1/2 B and 1/2 C?” (My very patient financial planner just went through this with me.)

Then the final “results” ALL depend on who is writing up the analysis. Customers dieing? No problem! We show a “decline in dissatisfied customers.”

P.S. If we women were as fickle and shallow as we’re portrayed in the poll du jour…we’d be too stupid to figure out how to fit the key in the car’s ignition, much less drive ourselves to the polls to vote.

P.P.S. Outside the political hoo-ha, I’ve found that liberals and conservatives all pretty much agree on things like quality, accessible health care; clean air, fiscal responsibility; a good education system; and feeding the hungry. Ah, but then the market researchers and political experts get to work on us…

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Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, political polls, market research, political marketing