I could tell right away that the voice was a machine or recording, despite recent advances in machine conversations. They wanted to poll me on some political opinions. I tend to be impatient with unsolicited calls by machines. We have gotten so many scam calls (“You are eligible for reduced interest rates on all your credit cards” or “your Social Security number has been suspended”) that I usually hang up quickly. But I wanted my opinions to get into any legitimate polls, so I thought I would give it a try. But I was wary, looking for any sign of a push poll.
It started normal enough. I was asked if I identified as Democrat, Republican, or independent. I was asked if I would vote for Trump or Warren, and maybe for Trump and 1 or 2 other candidates. There was a question about whether I would vote for Tina Smith or a Republican, indicating that this call was specific to Minnesota. The machine seemed to understand my answers.
Then it came. I was asked if I would vote for a candidate who favored free competitive enterprise, or vote for a candidate who favored socialism. I said “bad question, false dichotomy”. The machine seemed to have trouble understanding that answer. It quickly ended the call. I doubt that there are many machines that can understand the phrase “false dichotomy”.
It would be interesting to see what questions it might have asked if I had answered the last question with either of the suggested answers. But that would have been a misleading answer, and I don’t like misleading questions used to create a false image in the mind of the person being asked.
Polls are very hard to do for any question that does not have a simple answer from a small range of choices. You can’t fit people into spreadsheets, and when you try you will get a distorted view. But for a push poll, that problem is a feature, not a bug. They can try to channel people’s image of an issue into a narrow and distorted one.