Election day is

a week away.
Will it end the seemingly endless "robocalls"?  There have been more than ever this time around. 
We are on the "Do Not Call" register. That is supposed to stop people calling us and touting for business - but political parties are exempt from that. Some calls still reach us - people who are apparently happy to ignore the law. There is a real estate company I will never do business with because they insist that they aren't "selling" anything, merely informing us about the sale of a house in our  area.  There is a company which sells fertiliser who insisted we were customers and they had every right to ring us. There is the solar panel company which refused to believe we already have solar panels on our roof. (I told them to come and look from the street and that we would never do business with them either.)
And there are the companies who conduct "surveys". Oh yes, there have been a number of those. I just hang up.
This election there have been, by my count,  eighteen calls from "survey" companies about the election. Two came yesterday. They have been robocalls.
This didn't happen at the last election. 
What it means of course if that, now that the boundary has changed, the incumbent is worried about losing her seat and the hopeful is anxious to get as many votes as possible. There are also the minor players. One of those is responsible for at least five of those calls.  He won't win in this electorate. The real concern here will be to get the preferences of those who do not vote for a candidate from one of the two biggest parties. 
Do political parties really believe that all this push-polling gains votes? 
There is a small party running candidates in a number of seats. They have almost no money. They haven't put up any corflutes. They won't have enough people to man every polling booth all day and hand out "how to vote" cards. With luck they may get their single candidate back into the upper house. I hope they do because she has worked hard and done a very good job - far better than anyone expected -and achieved a great deal. They most definitely are not doing the "survey" type robocalls. I doubt it would win them any votes. 
So why do people bother with robocalls? Have they been proven to make a difference?
A former Prime Minister phoned me once - accidentally. In the short and pleasant exchange between us we joked about him not being a  robot. He would not have considered using robocalls. He had the manpower to reach his electorate without that, indeed to reach the nation without that.
A really good candidate will have the capacity to do that as well. There will be something there that will tell people, "Yes, you can vote for me and I will work for you."
Such politicians are few and far between.