As one who makes some of those calls, I can give you a hint, at least with the surveys. Most of them are done by the various individual campaigns, in an attempt to categorize people into three groups: those who are gonna vote for us, those who are gonna vote against us, and the undecided. People who are firmly for or against don't get any more survey calls. (Being largely volunteer operations of varying competence, however, screwups do happen.) The undecided get more sales material, maybe even a call from the candidate him or herself, and another survey later. As long as you're undecided, we'll keep coming back. The "for" people will receive get-out-the-vote calls, the "against" people won't (we would, after all, prefer that they forget to vote).
Multiply it all by the number of campaigns in your area. :(
We might not volunteer the name of the candidate we're call> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, if you recall during the last
New Hampshire. Fallout from the case is still going on, the guy in New Hampshire running the scam (James Tobin, the Republican director for New England, who later became Bush's New England campaign chair) made several dozen calls to a White House political affairs office number on election day (while the jamming was going on), and the White House is stonewalling on telling exactly whose desk that phone number went to. Tobin was convicted, there have been a couple of other plea bargains, and the owner of the telemarketing firm that actually made the hangup calls is awaiting trial.