Don't Ask Me:

This year's election-fueled furies are only the latest woes to befall the polling profession, already under siege and, some fear, on its way to extinction.

As the director of polling for The Washington Post, I join my fellow pollsters in the hospitality rooms at professional meetings to drink cheap wine and listen as they talk nervously about the present and agonize about the future:

Two consecutive Election Day debacles have shaken public confidence in exit polls, once viewed as the crown jewel of political surveys.

Cell phones, Caller ID and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters in with telemarketers and bar them from calling people at home.

Costs are soaring as cooperation rates remain at or near record lows. In some surveys, less than one in five calls produces a completed interview -- raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up.

I've had a few calls in the past claiming to be from polling organizations that I'd never heard of. I hung up on all of them. Apparently, I'm not the only one.