My life as a push poller.

• Author: McKinney, Jacqueline
• Position: First Person Singular - Essay

"Good Evening, I would like to speak to you about the upcoming election. It will only take a few minutes and it would be very beneficial to the candidates to see where voters currently stand on the issues. Do you have a moment to speak with me tonight?"

Most people who answer these phone calls respond in one of three ways: they hang up, sometimes with crass words (prompting the telemarketer to put their number back into the rotation); they politely decline to take the poll (getting marked "Do not call again"); or they take the poll.

Most people who take the polls are either in agreement with the script the pollster is reading to them, are clueless, or have recognized the true nature of these surveys and don't mind playing along. In many cases, the goal of the poll isn't to measure public opinion but to shape it.

In October 2014, I learned what pushpolling was as a working sheep at a "research" company in Reno, Nevada. I was hired thinking I would be making "get out the vote" calls in which I would tell voters about the candidates and issues in a more or less unbiased way, and would learn how they intended to vote. For a young person who loves the political process and was in need of a steady job, this was a win-win. Or so I thought.

On my first day, however, I realized through my training that the polling we would be doing was not unbiased. The questions we would ask were on the order of: "Don't you agree that the Republican Party is for the people and can make our country the greatest nation in the world, while the Democrats want to promote dependency and take your guns?"

Push polls involve real people working from scripts. But in spirit they are often not unlike robocalls, including the one that a white nationalist group produced in Iowa on behalf of Donald Trump. It called him "the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America. We don't need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump."

Another robocall that made the news was reportedly received by a voter in South Carolina. She told The Washington Post that when she informed an automated voice that she intended to vote for Marco Rubio, the voice replied: "Did you know that Marco Rubio and the Gang of Eight are for amnesty?" It went on to say Rubio was "for letting 11 million illegal immigrants stay in the United States and that he was for letting Syrians cross the borders freely," according to...