Fat Mary for President

G105 afternoon host Randi West probably is not someone you would expect to inspire a post on a polling blog, but she had a funny story about getting polled that she told on the air last night.

Pollsters use two main ways of producing the phone numbers they call for their polls. We use an RBS, or registration based sample, where we only call registered voters. Other companies use RDD, or random digit dialing, which essentially calls every possible phone number in existence, be it office, home, etc. Each method has its pluses and minuses, which you can read more about here.

A pollster yesterday that was obviously using RDD called the G105 request line yesterday for a survey about the Presidential race, and Randi answered the phone and was evidently quite uncooperative! When given the choices for President, she said other. The interviewer dutifully wrote that down, and then asked specifically who 'other' was. Randi said she supported 'Fat Mary' for President. The interviewer, somewhat taken aback, confirmed that Randi had said 'Fat Mary.' I wonder how they coded that!

It was pretty funny. Sometimes polling pops up in the most unusual places.