Every January, April, July, and October I closely watch the responses as they come in, a flood the first couple of days, a trickle towards the end. How many people will respond this time?

Well, for October 2008 (which technically ends tomorrow morning), a bit over 7,700, up from a bit over 7,000 last time. The response rate this time: 35.4 percent, down from 36.2 percent. Given the current level of economic distress, which has many people too stressed out to participate in non-essential activities (TrueDelta isn’t putting food on the table), not bad.

It looks like we’ll have 177 model/model years in the November results, plus partial results for another 175. This is up from 149 and 152, respectively, three months ago, and about where I hoped we’d be.

And yet, despite my best efforts, we still have two models–the 2006 Acura TSX and 2007 Jeep Compass / Patriot–that are a single response short of the minimum. In both cases we have plenty of owners signed up, and 24 of them have responded. The holdouts have been informed that 24 other owners need them to do what they signed up to do, and participate in the survey. Those of you who have responded know that it takes less than a minute when there’s no repair to report (and about 90 percent of the time there isn’t).

But in these two cases that 25th participant hasn’t been forthcoming. To put it figuratively, the ball has been fumbled a yard from the goal line, but no one has picked it up and walked it over the line. They all want someone else to do it.

Part of me knows this is to be expected. But it remains among the most frustrating aspects of conducting this research. Happy about the 177 results we’ll have, but not so much as to forget the two we’ll barely miss.