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Clinton Push Polling
The Clinton campaign has been push polling in IN, calling voters and listing negative things about Obama and then asking whether that would make you more likely, less likely, etc. to vote for him. The caller does the reverse in questions for Hillary. There is a partial recording of the call posted here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/is-hillary-clinton-push-p_b_98446.html
Thoughts?
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Comments (7)
Maybe I'm being naive here, but I don't see how this sort of thing helps the candidate. Any results that come through the poll are skewed, and therefore could lead to poor decisions for the campaign... And I can't imagine that the volume of people they're calling is terribly high, so it wouldn't have an impact in terms of spreading the message. Campaigns don't generally publish their own internal polling, right? So it's not likely to be used to sway public opinion.... So, what's the advantage?
April 25, 2008 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Umm, psst... it's not a poll. Was it Lee Atwater who invented this insidious technique? The unsuspecting voter is led to believe they are being asked to participate in a research effort, but the questions are designed to disseminate negative positions or misinformation. Look up push polling and McCain 2000 to see what W's people were up to in the primaries back then. It was just heinous. Unfortunately, unless the electorate fully understands the implications, it just benefits the sponsor of the polls by implanting negative impressions about a given candidate among the "participants" in the poll.
Hopefully, Clinton will be called out and will cease and desist. It's not a particularly admirable tactic for a campaign to engage in.
April 25, 2008 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right, it's basically a way to negative campaign one-on-one. It's also a way to poll what negative strategies would have more sway and give direction on what negative points to push. The converse being true (what positive things resonate more) for the push polling candidate.
A commenter on the article from Iowa says that there was lots of push poll calls from the Hillary campaign going around before their caucus also.
April 25, 2008 1:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
*fingers in ears*
la la la la people are basically good and decent, not mention smart enough to know when they're being had la la la
(Thanks for the reality check.)
April 25, 2008 2:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Funny, that's about the exact same reaction I had when I heard about Bush doing that in 2000. Just pathetic, though, that the tactic has been taken up by a Democratic. We can only hope an Obama victory will have some affect on all this for future contests.
April 25, 2008 2:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yea push-polling is the inverse of campaigning and the opposite of polling. It's how they word the questions, using very negative framing. And it's also how they weigh the question giving you options of only super-terrific wonderful to absolute worse ever. And making you choose. They also ask open-ended questions like "what, if....?" And if they find quite a few people appalled or unmoved by something that shapes the next days talking points. I promise you, some of the more bizarre things you've heard pushed by all the candidates and their surrogates these long 15 months or so, most of the really off the wall stuff has come from push-polling. Stephan Colbert does a push-poll everytime he asks a guest if Bush "is the best President ever, or only in the top 5". I promise you also, that the very old Clinton meme against Obama about his kindergarten teacher and his 3rd grade paper which both mentioned being President were push-polled a few days before her entire campaign started talking about it as an issue. And a large proportion of the pollees said something kind of negative about it, I'm not talking majority, just a plurality. And because most campaigns can only really afford to push poll a few hundred real people- a thousand or so (it's a very labor intensive thing) often-times there is no bump from bringing the talking points up to the general public. So that's why you see many attacks live a news-cycle or two, but then die.
I'm honesly suprised we haven't heard the whispering campaign that Obama has fathered two black children.
Yet.
April 25, 2008 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Scandalous!
April 25, 2008 2:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
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