That many phone calls would make me crazy!

Wow! I've never gotten a phone call, just mailings, written to me as if I'm a close friend. :D

If I do, I'll handle it like Jerry did on Seinfeld:

*Phone rings

Jerry: "Oh, gee, I can't talk right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll call you later."

"Uh, sorry, we're not allowed to do that."

"Oh, I guess you don't want people calling you at home."

"No."

Ugh.

I like the idea of messing with their heads/stats. lol I would set my answering machine to pick up all calls immediately. We generally let our landline go to the machine anyway.

I suppose this is one advantage to living in a state that is assumed to be a lock for one party. We rarely see or hear political ads for presidential elections. No calls.

Iowa has the first caucus on Monday, February 1Iowa caucus.

I am already sick of the campaign commercials and tv nonstop crap about it. If I never hear The Donald's voice again it will be a happy day. I can't have the tv on because it's never ending. I try to catch the weather but I think I will just check the internet for it. Phone calls. I'm going to tell them I'm not going to vote this time. It's the only way I know to be taken off their call list. Can't wait to hear the response to that. I don't think your voting information should be used by telemarketers; especially not politicians.

The people making these calls are often volunteers. I've done it twice, and it's excruciatingly hard. Nonetheless, I am motivated to be involved. I urge folks to be kind to the people on the other end of the phone, even though it can be tempting to be snarky.

Gee....I feel special....Ben's called me three times....but not in the last few weeks...I guess he's lost interest in me already!

Oh goodness. If they're still using phone calls as their outreach, they need to regroup. Had Mitt Romney taken a selfie with a gay Hispanic and posted it on Twitter in 2012...

I'm not going to share my political affiliation here, but there's a reason why a man whose middle name is "Hussein" has been elected twice as our president during times when conventional news coverage has us fearful of Muslim names.

Robocalls are irritating not just because they interrupt our evening dinner but because they are truly a waste of the gross amount of campaign dollars.

It's been awhile since we received a political phone call. Our state is so far down the list on the primary, we rarely have a choice of who to vote for by the time our turn arrives. Personally I feel in this day and age there is no reason to spread the vote out. Irks me to no end.

Some of you get no calls??!?!? I'm moving! We are in what is sometimes considered a swing state, so we get calls from both sides, though mostly from the party we are registered to. (Uh, duh, I'm already a registered **, I'm probably going to lean your direction anyway. Why are you calling ME?) For political reasons, I have considered changing my registration to 'unaffiliated', but then we would really get inundated with calls from both sides.

We rarely use our land line for anything and would like to get rid of it. But our cell coverage is so lousy at home that we would be without phone service. Hmmmm, that might be a good thing every 4 years!

I live in Maryland...they never call us here!

I do think it would be fun to mess with the numbers and say crazy stuff!

Anne, I live in MD and get phone calls all the time tho I can't recall if they are for national campaigns. I know for sure I get them for local/state campaigns. My husband and I are registered in different parties, so we get them from both tho more often from dh's party. Thank God for caller ID and answering machines. We never answer our home phone unless we recognize the number. We haven't gotten any calls yet for this election cycle though.

I agree. Calls and door to door, both of which I've done as a volunteer, are entirely antiquated, and I seriously doubt their effectiveness . I did it for our current president, but I would never do it again… My involvement takes other forms.

eta: we have a landline only for emergency purposes and I don't actually even know what the phone number is. It's simply a back up. And almost never rings but if it does we know it's nonsense. Or Robo calls from the town about things like floods. I Jealously guard my cell phone number and very very rarely get unsolicited calls on that number.

Southern NH here. We don't use a land line, in order to minimize these calls, but I've been getting one or two on my cell, and the log indicates the Boston area. I'm going to switch off the ringer and just let it light up, until the primary is over.

Of course, political sign season is just getting started, and to make absolutely sure I get the message, there are at least 20 signs for each candidate, every few hundred yards. Not counting the local signs. Politics is the NH state sport.

We are starting to receive a few calls, it will get worse as our primary approaches. I suffer more because we have a mixed marriage (politically speaking). Get hit by both sides.

Here in (at least this part of) New Mexico we were deluged with political calls for months before the last presidential election. It was horrible! We now have that No Solicitors auto answer on our phone, but I don't think it will help much with political calls. I may put out a request to family and friends to only call us on our cell phones once these PIA phone calls start up here again.

I work in a field where we often collect data via surveys, so I generally will answer phone surveys, just for kharma. But when the election calls get intense, I start refusing. "No, I'm sorry, I've already responded to two surveys tonight."

Because I have experience with writing survey that we want to be unbiased, I have no patience for the party "surveys" that are really just a lead-in to a fundraising pitch. They frame the questions in such a way that even a person who disagrees is hard-pressed to answer the "wrong" way.

I hate the campaign signs too. Some of them are ridiculously huge - and often for some local position like water commissioner, or something that few people know or care anything about. The signs don't sway votes. They're just another way to express how polarized we've become, IMO.

We get tons of call, none of which we answer. I try to block any repeat caller numbers too, both on my cell and home phone. I'm getting loads of spam phone calls on my cell phone now too. Our TV is programmed to display the caller ID so if we happen to be watching TV, we don't have to worry about running for the phone. We'd probably get rid of our landline too but live in a rural area which, until recently had spotty cell coverage. Has anyone tried 'nomorobo' or any of the available apps to stop the robo calls?

I have nomorerobo, love it. It's my understanding that it won't stop political recordings, but it sure has cut down on all the other automatic calls we were receiving. My phone rings once, then the robo call goes away. We average at least 3 a day. I did have to teach myself not to grab the phone until after the second ring. I also now check the caller ID, if it's not someone I know, I don't answer it.

For those who do not get calls, are in you in open primary states where you do not have to register as one or the other. I am registered one way but sometimes vote the other. I am tempted to just register as an independent but fear that would mean getting calls from both parties. I love, love, love caller ID during the political season and I do not want to ever be without a standard answering machine that allows me to actually hear who is on the other end of the line before answering unknown numbers.

I absolutely detest those calls and if I happen to answer by mistake I always tell the volunteer that I will vote for the opposing candidate if I get another unsolicited phone call from her candidate. Or course the other guy is also making the calls too so it's a no win situation.

We don't usually answer unknown numbers on our landline but the candidates use local numbers so we don't know at first if the call might be legitimate. I attended a get together for a candidate and when they opened the questions to the audience I asked how they got the phone numbers and more importantly how do I get off their list - and my number is unlisted.

The candidate told me it was from voter registration so I called the county election board and had them remove my number. Unfortunately it's not going to be too effective since the Party has my number too. I guess I should try calling them too.

KCCI-TV news tonight said hotel rooms in Des Moines are going for $500 a night!! That's nuts. All the campaign people and news people will pay it.

So that explains why I have been getting calls from some number in Boston! I don't know anybody in Boston, so I don't answer.

I read on one of these forums years ago about someone who had a good time with telemarketers/promoters. This individual, after determining who was calling him, kept interrupting the phone call to go answer the doorbell to give candy to trick-or-treaters. Then he'd come back to the phone and describe the costumes the kids were wearing, how much candy he had left, how the weather was, how many times he'd raked his yard this month, etc., etc. This method works best, of course, if it isn't really late October. :)

tish - I am not in an open primary state. Just a state that is assumed to go Democrat so no point in anyone spending money here. I do get calls for non-presidential campaigns. We got a ridiculous number of calls a few years ago when we had a high profile congressional election. It was truly annoying so I understand how those of you in first primary/swing states must feel.

My experiences with campaigning and where the information comes from. I worked for the Ramsey Clark senatorial campaign (yes, I'm pretty old) when I was in college. I had a copy of the voter registration roles for my area and I sent literature to everyone registered as a Democrat or independent. (How old school and small budget does that sound? lol) I did one session of calling for candidate Obama. We called registered Democrats. The point of it was more to get out the vote rather than change minds. I didn't do it again because the campaign office didn't have enough phones so I had to use my mobile phone. I got calls afterwards from people who hadn't answered their phones. "Saw you on caller ID, what did you call about?" calls. We had been advised not to leave messages but in retrospect maybe we should have.

Hang in there everyone!