quote by Zora Neale Hurston
~a column by Colleen O’Brien
So, what do you think of polls? Do you believe their results? Like right now, the Gallup Poll tells us that 12 percent of the population in the U.S. does not like Congress; does this ring true with you?
George Gallup, born in Jefferson at the beginning of the last century, founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, now known as the Gallup Poll, granddaddy of them all. He determined that the results of asking a random sampling of a thousand people a day a question having to do with anything from who’s going to win the Presidency to who believes in spanking children will give accurate results of how the majority of folks in an entire nation thinks.
Sometimes, is it a question like, “Do you think Congress is stupid?”
The Gallup company goes out of its way to be fair, according to it. This broad spectrum fairness includes asking questions only of the non-institutionalized population of a country 15 years or older. Gallup polls cell phone users a well as land line users (and those of us with unlisted numbers . . . which gives pause, if like me you slide into thinking about the National Security Administration) and face-to-face for those who are phoneless.
Gallup’s polling includes males and females, any nationality living in this country, folks of different political, sexual and religious persuasions, rich and poor, employed and unemployable, high school dropouts as well as PhDs.
Mr. Gallup, who worked right up the educational ladder to PhD himself, said this about the need for polling. “If democracy is supposed to be based on the will of the people, then somebody should go out and find out what that will is.”
Doing something about the opinions is not included in the survey.
Even though we tell the pollsters that 88 percent of us don’t like Congress, nothing – like getting rid of all of them, rewriting the Constitution, refusing to pay them — happens. The pollers and we the poll-ees are just puny humans playin’ around the toes o’ time, not doing much about any of it.
Whatever you think of this, starting in 1935, George was the first and most successful of pollsters. Humans, being the way we are, now have quite a few copycat polls around the world telling us what we think. I for one am not exactly leary of their conclusions – or at any rate the Gallup conclusions, for George set in stone that his company would never poll for a political party – but . . . and here is the crux of my problem with George — I have never been asked to participate.
What does this mean from a company that polls a thousand people a day, 350 days of a year, in the U.S. alone?
I would like to be asked a thing or two, and wouldn’t you think that by now, having lived such a long time, I would have been randomly picked at least once?
Have you ever been called? What did they ask? Did you see the results of the poll in the newspaper? Was it fun?
Since I have never been a poll-ee, if you have, let me know. If Gallup won’t call me, maybe you will.
I know that many polls determine what it is we will buy (the Chamber of Commerce questions). This is no doubt good for manufacturers and retailers, but what about Congress and George Gallup’s questions regarding a democracy based on the will of the people? We’ve been asked and we’ve answered: Congress has been bought, we have told the world we know it and don’t like it. Now how do we use this poll fact to our will instead of just playing around the toes of time?
I really wish they’d ask me.
