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?
If you think about it, what happens when you get one of these phone calls. How do you know who it's from? It's a pretty fucked up situation, whereby people will try to cancel you or worse if you're not part of the mob.