Have you received a political text recently? Chances are the answer is yes and you might be getting them multiple times a day.

Dr. Joe Morris, the Chair of the Political Science Department at Mercyhurst University said text messages are one of the more recent ways polling is conducted and he too receives them several times a day. "It seems like every time my phone dings nowadays, it's a political advertisement or poll", said Dr. Morris.

He said the polling and political surveys has changed through the years. "We used to call people on the telephone and have a conversation with them, now we have a variety of methods including online surveying which involves text messaging", said Dr. Morris.


In all his years of polling, Dr. Morris said it has evolved to keep up with the times, and while some interviews are still done over the phone, they too have advanced as well.


According to Dr. Morris, "We used to call individual voters and would talk to them with real interviews, and today if we do a telephone it's always automated, it's not a real person doing the interview."


Dr. Morris said if people choose to respond to the polls, the way they are interpreted and analyzed has changed, "Polls I think are a good indicator of the general trend that we are seeing, but they are no longer the precise measures that we once thought they were."


But if you get a text message, should you respond? Dr. Morris said it's up to the individual, "One of the challenges of being a participant in a poll is that you don't know how the organization is doing its work. Not all polls are created equal, some are wonderful, they rely on a representative sample, they are totally honest with how they report their results. While others are not, and some polls are designed to persuade you and not to get information from you."


He said polling can be a challenge and right now it's all about finding the best method. "We are in the midst of a grand experiment of polling and in all likelihood, we will land on one in the near future that does what we need it to do", said Dr. Morris.

He also stressed that the text messages, whether they be ads or surveys, aren't necessarily meant to persuade voters, rather they are used to remind people that it's an election year and to get out to vote.