DFL candidate Ashwin Madia’s campaign says it has received numerous reports of so-called “push polling” from voters in the district. Push polls masquerade as scientific polls, but are actually telemarketing efforts designed to disseminate negative messages about a candidate.
In a press release the campaign said the calls “distorted Madia’s position on Iraq and falsely stated that Madia was impeached when he was the president of the University of Minnesota student body.”
Campaign Manager Stu Rosenberg sent a letter to his counterpart at Republican Erik Paulsen’s campaign calling on Paulsen to disavow the tactics.
Push polling is an especially unsavory campaign tactic because it involves several layers of deception. The first lie involves the identity of the caller. The person receiving the call is led to believe that the caller is an unbiased source when in fact he is anything but. Second, as in this case, the “poll” itself usually consists of several lies. For example, the caller might ask “Would you be less likely to support candidate X if you knew he beat his wife?” Push polling is the worst of American politics, just ask John McCain.
Unfortunately, push polling is hard to combat. You can go to the press, but reporters often want to report on the content of the call, which makes the whole effort self-defeating from the push-polling victim’s perspective because the press accounts will just spread the lie (just look at various mainstream stories written about the email rumor campaign against Barack Obama). Hopefully the Twin Cities media will be more reasonable (as MPR was) and report on the existence of the push poll without insisting on reporting the contents of the call.
One last thing on this subject. The Paulsen campaign has tried to turn this back on Madia by claiming that AFSCME is push polling against Paulsen on Madia’s behalf. This is a silly accusation.
Eliot Seide, executive director of Minnesota AFSCME Council 5, says his organization is not push-polling in the 3rd Congressional District. He says AFSCME members are calling other AFSCME members, urging them to support Madia, and he says the phone bank script does not even mention Erik Paulsen.
Not every phone call a voter recieves is a push poll and the AFSCME calls certainly don’t fit the profile.
I am simply SHOCKED that conservatives would resort to sh*ty, underhanded tactics
Both campaigns are doing this. The polling being done is not to miss-educate voters, it is to find out what issues are most likely to have a voter dislike the candidate in the questions. For example.
1) If you learned candidate x was accused of theft would this affect your vote?
2) If you learned candidate x was involved in filming an adult movie…
3) If you learned candidate x wrote anti-union comments….
Whichever question comes up highest is the one they will then attack candidate x on. Despite Msr. Madia’s denials, he and/or his supporters are doing the same thing.
As we all know dumb, is a fine, upstanding moral example of Republicanism… when he is not out stealing election signs.
I still think that is another example of an ongoing criminal enterprise and I certainly hope that President Obama takes a page from George Bush’s book and investigates them without court oversight, doesn’t hire them for DOJ jobs and harasses them through the FBI.
Zack: When are you going to do a post re Obama’s collapse in the polls in Minnesota? I though Jesus Christ…I mean Obama…was going to crush McCain here in Minnesota? What has happened? Are the “bitter” folks who “cling to guns and religion” starting to come home?
“Both campaigns are doing this. ”
Yeah, “right.”
“Push polling is an especially unsavory campaign tactic because it involves several layers of deception.”
As is a blog accusing a candidate of push-polling on little or no evidence.
amuseinc -
Read the Wall Street Journal’s commentary today in section A. Obama isn’t the one to clean up politics. The article chronicled Obama’s rise by becoming part of vs. going head-to-head with Chicago’s corrupt political machine. Obama is a very smart man — as was Machiavelli.
DtM
Are you going for the off-topic record? Seriously does fecklessness know no bounds?
It seems that charges of republiCon push-polling may not be limited to our little patch of tundra. I just googled “promark researcy corporation”, and found this:
Douglas’ Texas-based Push-Polls Exploiting Brooke Bennett Tragedy (UPDATED x2)
by: odum
Sun Jul 13, 2008 at 13:55:55 PM EDT
Just got this email from a reader. If true, it is beyond vile and reprehensible: (Green Mountain Daily)
I’d rather get my facts from a news source that didn’t think privatizing Social Security was a peachy keen idea a mere weeks before the bottom dropped out. The Wall Street Journal is sort of the Republican version of Pravda as far as I can tell only with worse cartoons. I’ve actually been printed in the Journal many years ago… I spent the money dating a Socialist trollop.
So for going even more off topic… both the Reverend and John McCain were lying last week as old John was listening on that new fashioned “phone thingy” for the questions and Obama’s answers before he took the stage. Typical Republicans…
So amuseinc, which news sources would you deem acceptable? I’m interested to hear.
And do you deem Obama’s Best-Seller books as factual and newsworthy? If so, it is only fair that someone have a chance to tell the other side of the story.
Definitions:
Empirical evidence: provable or verifiable evidence.
Anecdotal evidence: based on personal observation, or random investigations rather than systematic scientific evaluation
The Madia campaign has empirical evidence of this push poll: Three sworn affidavits. An affidavit is a formal sworn statement of fact, signed by the declarant and witnessed as to the veracity of the affiant’s signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public.
Michael Brodkorb, an Erik Paulsen consultant, anecdotally says, “he has heard reports of anti-Paulsen push polling.” Hardly credible evidence!
Note, if you will, this comment has been submitted with no ad hominum attacks such as “moonbats”, “hypocrites in the GreedOverPrinciples party.”, “king of the elementary school playground” award”,”Monte Bute is an assclown.” Thereby, I attempt to address the substance of this arguement rather than attacking the person making the arguement in order to discredit the arguement.
I’ll bite… here is a list of bookmarked sites I have for “News.” It is about as mainstream as you can get, nothing shocking there. WSJ doesn’t make it as the bias is way too much to use on a daily basis.
This is just my starting point of common visits on any given day… pretty normal for any “news interested” Minnesotan I would guess… no particular order, though I always check the foreign press if I think something is particularly important.
http://www.startribune.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/
http://www.cbsnews.com/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
http://www.newsweek.com/
http://www.usnews.com/
http://www.c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS
http://www.salon.com/
http://www.nydailynews.com/
http://www.nypost.com/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.latimes.com/
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45
http://observer.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.iht.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.winnipegsun.com/
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/front/index.html
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/
http://www.twincities.com/
Sworn affidavits. I wonder if Michael Brodkorb is willing to make a sworn affidavit that he really heard and KNOWS FOR A FACT that Madia’s campaign or the Union in question is push polling. If he won’t, then it looks like what he is being paid to do is change the subject by muddying the waters with innuendo.
Sounds like the Madia Campaign has the facts, sworn to be true by 3 people.
No name calling here either, just sticking to the facts.
I was push polled by the Coleman campaign 6 weeks ago. I answered several, seemingly legitimate questions honestly then the pollster launched into a series of questions like, “Would you be less likely or more likely to vote for a candidate if you were to find out that,,,?” Of course the “that” was something throughly objectionable. I told the pollster it wouldn’t matter. At the end of the poll I asked the pollster who contracted her company to conduct this poll. She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. I then told her she needed to be ashamed of herself. Push polling can be overt or subtle but as a campaign tactic it has to be exposed and punished.
You can be sure Paulsen’s campaign will not even acknowledge this is a sleezy practice, and I doubt they will make a statement condemning it….if they did that, they would be condemming their own campaign. Paulsen doesn’t have to worry about anybody puch polling him..why waste the time…his record of voting against education, against the transportation bill, and for Big Business speaks for itself.