As most people with cell phones know, robocalls are a common occurrence. In 2018, Americans received over 48 billion unwanted phone calls which is a 56% raise from 2017.
Most people have received these pestering phone calls, many even experiencing them several times a day. Because of this, Apple has released a feature on its newest update (iOS 13), that allows users to automatically send these unknown calls straight to voicemail.
While this may seem like the best way to stop these pestering phone calls, it has a major effect on the industry of legitimate opinion research. This industry has a direct effect on the campaign world, making it harder to gain public opinion and measure movement.
While many opinion-based polling companies have moved their research online, it is harder for campaigns to do so. This is because it is much more difficult to obtain accurate information below the state level any other way besides telephone surveys.
Due to this new software, it is projected that the 2020 election cycle may be the last one where polling is conducted by telephone surveys. Online polling is estimated to become how the majority of opinions are taken into account, despite the issues of accuracy surrounding it.
While a large majority of people send unknown calls straight to voicemail anyways, this new software update will expedite the decline of telephone surveys. While this will not stop the collection of data used for campaigns, it will change the way that the data is collected.
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