
One day last week, I issued a small Facebook rant about a
political survey that refused to let me participate because I was over 65.
Comments came quickly. Some were simply enraged voters; others attempted to
explain why pollsters might not want our input. One friend suggested that maybe
we old codgers are just too smart and experienced to be fooled.
Within the next few days, I was able to discover who
commissioned the survey—a young newcomer to politics with an obvious agenda.
But more important, I learned that the survey was uncontrolled and invalid from
the start because it kept cropping up on my Facebook feed, a fact that would
allow people—some people, at least—to respond multiple times, thus skewing the
results. The second time I saw it, I tried checking the block that said I preferred
not to reveal my name. Nope. “Thanks for your time.”
The third time, I lied, shaving a couple of decades off my
age, and was welcomed. Now I could see the questions and discover the “issues”
they were investigating. Um-hum! First, they asked my opinion of famous people—all
two of them. The first was a universally admired historical figure, a spiritual
leader dead for over fifty years. The second was a living political figure who
has been ridiculed and publicly discounted. Answers were foregone conclusions.
Then we came to the meat of the survey—not issues at all,
but the local race between an old politician and a challenger (who just
happened to pay for the survey.) We started with the basics—Who are you going
to vote for? (Grammar be damned!) The following questions—lots of them—took a
carefully-worded legalistic approach:
·
“What if we told you that Candidate A is a mafia
boss, a felon with a lengthy criminal record, a slum landlord, a crook with an
ill-gotten fortune in a bank in the Cayman Islands?”
·
“What if we told you Candidate A believes the elderly
and those with medical or mental infirmities should be put out of their misery
like we do with old pets?”
·
“What if Candidate A wants to double your taxes
and take away all your government benefits?”
Notice that none of these are accusations or statements of
fact. “We didn’t say that. We just asked how you would feel if we did tell you
that.”
Repeat: “Who are you going to vote for?”
Then came the questions about the other candidate:
·
“What if we told you Candidate B spends time reading
to small children, living a healthy lifestyle, and petting puppies?”
·
“What if we told you Candidate B gives money to
charity and walks amid rainbows, flowers, and unicorns?”
·
“What if Candidate B will lower your taxes and
give you everything your heart desires?”
Now the clincher: “Who are you going to vote for?” (Again!)
I always assumed that the purpose of a survey was to let a
political candidate know what the voters were thinking. If this survey is any
example, that’s no longer the case. Here, the questions are designed to force
the voter to think what the candidate wants him to think.
Do such tactics really work? I suspect they do sometimes,
which makes it all the more important that we stand up and call fouls where we
see them. What can you do? Pay attention to who says what. Know your
candidates. And most important, get out there and vote. Nobody’s checking your age at the ballot box.