As part of our regular survey of CA voters we often ask questions that others do not. This time we asked about how voters feel about robo calls. No surprise, they hate them.
Please do not mistake my research for my own opinion though. I support the use of robo calls (although never in the practice of conducting legitamate research) for campaigns. They are cheap and especially in response to a late hit, they can be very effective.
However most voters say they don’t even listen to the calls.
Our poll, which can be found here shows that 82% of likely voters say they find the calls annoying and a full 66% say they never listen to them.
Not listening can be a missleading answer. If a call opens with "Hi, this is Meg Whitman…" and then the voter hangs up or deletes the message, at least the impression of Meg calling has been made whether they hear the rest of her message or not.
This leads to an important tactical edict for robo calls: Put the candidates names at the begining of the call. Even if you’ve got Bill Clinton calling for Jerry Brown, he should start with "I support Jerry Brown. This is Bill Clinton…" rather than "Hi, this is Bill Clinton…"
You can click through to the full report with crosstabs from this link.