I realize it's a bit of a paranoid idea, and you might want to laugh at these people, but I can't blame two senior citizens for believing that something like that could happen. Hasn't CNN threatened to dox people before? I strongly suspect people are now, more than ever, lying to pollsters, because they see businesses burning on the TV, people getting fired, and they're scared that if they answer the wrong way, someone will come after them.
Can we really say that the media conducting these polls are above that?
Republicans have been lying to pollsters for a long time. I remember 2015-2016 seeing many many Trump supporters claiming they were going for Hillary to skew the polls.
I always answer online polls with false inputs that way. Keeps the left making stupid mistakes.
It's called the "Bradley Effect".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect#:~:text=The%20Bradley%20effect%20(less%20commonly,candidate%20run%20against%20each%20other.