It’s Past Time To Disrupt The Polling Industry

How many times this year have you spoken to a pollster, political or otherwise? For millions of Americans, the answer is zero. And if one did reach you, would you answer their questions? According to Pew Research Center, only 6% of the people it calls are willing to talk. Those numbers represent a significant problem — and a huge opportunity.

At the turn of the century, Pew’s response rate stood at 36%. The freefall puts the integrity of polling results at serious risk. Traditional polling uses telephone calls to reach individuals whose opinions, tastes and experiences match those of the wider population. The answers from this “sample” can then be used to represent the whole. But for it to work, the group polled must be comprised of all the same types of people who make up the entire U.S. population. It’s more difficult, more time-consuming and much more expensive to reach them.

That can be attributed to a number of reasons, including caller ID and Americans’ general unwillingness to spend 15 or 20 minutes answering a stranger’s questions, particularly on topics they’d sometimes be hesitant to discuss even with family. The proliferation of mobile phones hasn’t helped. Cell phone interviews cost 1.5 to 2 times more than those on a landline and take a lot more time, in part because federal law requires mobile phones to be dialed manually. Plus, the dramatic rise in the number of robocalls and instances of spoofing have made mobile phone users far less likely to answer a call from someone not in their contacts.

A number of solutions are being tried out. Pew, for example, is considering shorter interviews and offering financial incentives to those who participate in its surveys. Many companies have moved to online polls hoping to reach more people faster and easier. Others use what are known as mixed-mode surveys, which incorporate a little of everything — landline, mobile and online. All of them have their own failings. Internet surveys can be subject to unethical or pranked rigging, and respondents are known to answer questions differently when they’re asked by a live interviewer versus when they’re completing an online form.

The good news? The deficiencies of traditional polling open a real opportunity for entrepreneurs, particularly those using artificial intelligence. The marketing research and public opinion polling industry is an almost $21 billion market. Some startups are already having success, like Canada’s Advanced Symbolics Inc. Its “Polly” AI successfully predicted Brexit and Donald Trump’s 2016 win, outcomes flubbed by traditional polling outfits.

Traditional polling assumes people of a certain age group, demographic or community reliably vote the same way. It wasn’t designed for a world where minds can change on a dime — or a tweet. AI and machine learning have the ability to access and analyze millions of terabytes of data far beyond the ability of current pollsters, and use it to predict outcomes. Most of what we know about American media usage, labor and job markets and social conditions, among myriad other topics, comes from polling our fellow citizens. We need to use modern technology to ensure we’re getting an accurate read of our modern world.