Polling paranoia

So we get a lot of push polls around here. Most are about local offices and are pretty obvious: "Which candidate would you vote for, out of Joe Smith or Mary Taylor, if I were to tell you that Joe Smith, when pulled over for DUI last year, was found to have three mutilated kittens in his trunk, while Mary Taylor is a hard-working mother of three who cares about ordinary working people?" They'll never tell you who they're really working for—if you ask, they give you the name of the PR firm that hired the call shop, but not who hired the PR firm.

But this weekend I got something a little weirder. The caller started by asking for me by name and then explained that he was administering a three-question survey on "women's health issues." The first question was on whether I would support a measure that required insurance companies that covered Viagra to also cover birth control pills. I had a minor eruption ("I'm offended by the parallels you're drawing!"), and we went on.

The second question was about abortion, and some neuron fired before the guy was done asking. "You started the call by checking my name. Who are you working for again?" Again, I got the name of the PR firm who had hired the call shop, but no real answer. (I hadn't heard of the firm, and the caller wasn't especially well-trained, although the script sounded professionally written.) I got off the call, so I'll never know what the third question was going to be.

Who, exactly, would want to know this kind of thing, and keep it filed by name? It's not like you can't fully predict my voting behavior from my zip code and my party registration. Does some unholy alliance of insurance companies and bible-thumpers that thinks this data might come in handy someday?

Comments

[Amy S.]

Some doctors sell their patient lists. Don't know if it's still legal in a post-HIPAA era, but it has certainly been done in the past.

[Steve]

I'm not sure how I got to this blog, but I can't stop reading it.