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Michael Jackson for Governor

Providing the name of every contender and party can become impractical in a telephone poll. Online surveys provide a welcome solution for companies and voters alike.

During last year's presidential campaign in the United States, the CPOD Global Scan Inbox frequently received messages from discouraged American voters. Many of them complained that, once they got a chance to voice their opinion to a pollster, they did not hear as many options as they hoped for. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was sometimes left out of surveys, as well as Libertarian Michael Badnarik, Constitution Party nominee Michael Peroutka and Green Party hopeful David Cobb.

A voter from Arizona described how he tried, in vain, to have an interviewer register his choice. He was unhappy with his support for Badnarik being sent to the 'Other' column, or worse yet, to be branded as one of many 'Undecided' citizens.

A woman in the swing state of Iowa - possibly one of few Americans who received phone calls from two distinct pollsters - discussed how subtle differences in the way candidates were described could have had an effect on respondents. Once she was asked to choose between George W. Bush, and John Kerry. The second time around, it was George Bush (no 'W' this time) and John F. Kerry. The 'F' -she contended- recalled the Kennedy mystique. She blamed the inclusion of Kerry's middle initial for a noticeable tilt in the sample to the Democratic nominee.

Still, no single election in North America proved more of a challenge for telephone pollsters than the October 2003 California gubernatorial recall. From a simple Yes-or-No question regarding the dismissal of Gray Davis, interviewers had to ask a subsequent query that defied patience on both sides of the line. With 135 candidates running for office, it was hard for anyone to figure out where to establish a cut-off point. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cruz Bustamante were the established frontrunners, but the 'Other' column could have easily received more responses than the first seven or eight favourite contenders.

An online survey could have saved time, money, and sanity in California, especially had they taken advantage of the medium and accompanied the lengthy list of names with candidate's photos. That way, people would have been able to verify that Republican contender Michael Jackson was not wearing a silver glove, and that Robert Dole was not the Republican who fell off the stage in the Golden State before the 1996 presidential election.

Online polls conducted last year in the U.S. proved more accurate in predicting the outcome of the national race than traditional telephone polls, as well as being able to predict the outcome in some of the key battleground states. Hopefully this trend will continue in the future, allowing many more voters to become part of the political process without being inconvenienced.

Posted on March 2, 2005
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