Yes, Gallup calls black people too
While Hillary Clinton's election made me largely lose interest in polls, I was pleasantly surprised by my caller ID notification
I’ve never been a big fan of butterflies. Sure, they’re pretty, but I keep thinking that they’re just a wiggly caterpillar with a coat on. And I’m convinced that just like dogs know when you’re scared of them, butterflies know when you don’t want to be bothered. In turn, and just like dogs, they seem to be more curious about you.
Lately, I’ve been hearing more complaints about polls, specifically from African-American podcasters, and why they don’t feel like they’re included in these political poll stats.
I read (and this could totally be made up) that African tribes believed that yellow butterflies were the souls of their ancestors, returning to bless the living with their wisdom and love. That was sorta comforting, but I don’t necessarily want them landing on me. They’ve done so at least three times. According to ThoughtCo, butterflies will fly on you if you “smell sweet. If you're wearing a skin lotion or perfume that smells a bit like flowers, that attracts a hungry butterfly.”
Considering most adult butterflies live only one or two weeks, my understanding is this entire experience with butterflies is rare. Interestingly, another “rare” topic keeps coming up in recent weeks: poll calls. Lately, I’ve been hearing more complaints about polls, specifically from African-American podcasters, and why they don’t feel like they’re included in these political poll stats. The more complaints I hear, the more I wonder which will happen first for many — the butterfly landing or a call from one of those surveyors.
After news reports went on and on about how Hillary Clinton was going to nail the presidential election, and she ended up losing the electoral vote even after winning the popular vote, the less interested I was in hearing poll predictions. According to the Boston Globe, all polls had shown Clinton ahead of Donald Trump, with some 80,000 voters in three states deciding it for Trump. So does it really matter what the popular vote is if the electoral college breakdown seals it anyway?
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In my opinion, it does — and it doesn’t. Why? In high school, I had a job as a radio research strategist. I’d call people’s homes to talk about music, radio station culture and a few “world” questions. Asking these questions individually gave me constructive responses (unless the surveyor was in a hurry or it was dinnertime and they cursed me out). As a teenager though, I was paying way more attention to how my co-workers talked about these same surveys to each other — when their groupthink opinions could affect their independent responses.
I often wondered would their responses be the same if their cubicle neighbor had something different to say. On the phone, one-on-one, that was not the case. While some households were annoyed by my call, others were intrigued and happy to participate. They had never answered this kind of survey before.
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Even as a former surveyor, I still never expected Gallup (or any other poll company) to ever call me. First, in the early part of the 2000s, there was a conflict of interest for several years. If they had asked me if I worked for a newspaper or a news outlet, I would’ve been disqualified. But I haven’t worked in a physical newsroom in several years. Earlier this year, when I saw an unfamiliar number on my phone and the name “Gallup,” I definitely thought it was a crank call. Turns out I was having one of those butterfly-landing moments. Gallup actually does call black people too.