system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can polls be representative if only the kinds of people willing to talk to pollsters respond?

I'm pretty sure if I got a call asking me to participate in a poll or survey, I'd just hang up. My friends and family say the same.
gpt
A good poll accounts for this--there is data available on the kinds of people that are likely to respond to polls, and the pollster should weight the results to be more representative of the population polled. For example, many polls undersample young people, so giving more weight to the young people who did respond (considering their proportion of the population) corrects this bias.

This is one reason that it is very important to check a poll's methodology before considering the results. A poll that is poorly conducted is worthless. Since it is political polling season, it is worth noting that even the best of polls are bad indicators of how people will vote--people say one thing, but when they are in the voting booth it is often quite something else. Hence why so many in the Republican field are hoping for a primary win despite polling low.