Telephone surveys...I finally got to participate...

So today I participated in a phone survey…it was on political involvement.

You always hear that "a 1000 people were polled" and yet I have never been part of that group. Always hearing about them yet never doing one soI’m not going to lie; I was a little excited to participate…until I heard the questions that were asked. If you have ever taken a stats class you will tend to find fault with the order of questions or the way they were worded….

Some of the questions:

• What are the biggest obstacle that the Liberal Party faces?
  (This is a widely open ended question…Do I think of external or internal…or dare I say…what obstacles?)

• Did the Conservatives win the election, or did the Liberals lose it?
  (My response, neither…Frankly, at 102 seats, I don’t think we lost it, but we surly didn’t win it.)

• What do you think of the communication of the election, the national campaign team, the local campaign teams?
  (wow, such a free for all)

• What do you think the liberal party needs to do better next time?
  (well…I have a lot of views…work together as one party and bring it back to policy…to name a few...)

• If you had to vote for these 5 people…who would you vote for?….
  (Given that there are 15…5 was too few too choose from)

• What is your view on previous leadership of Chrétien and Martin?
  (Very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, very unfavorable…)

All in all, the survey was very poorly written and was geared towards streamlining your answers for one or two candidates. It’s not a fair representation if I can’t choose the candidate are told to pick out of a list of 5. If I could rank them, that would be better and more reflective.