Mon 4 Feb 2008
This past Sunday, my wife and I were having a bite to eat at a local burger joint when the table next to us started talking about how Barack Obama was a Muslim.
This is a result of the sleaze campaigning tactic known as push-polling or robo-polling.
Anyone who stoops to this level doesn’t deserve a seat in a democratic government. Which brings me to Hillary Clinton. The LA Times is reporting there is a Pro-Clinton push poll going around California.
Ed Coghlan was just starting to prepare his dinner in the northern San Fernando Valley the other night when the phone rang. The caller was very friendly. He identified himself as a pollster who wanted to ask registered independents like Coghlan a few questions about the presidential race and all the candidates for Super Tuesday’s California primary.
Ed, who’s a former news director for a local TV station, was curious. He said, “Sure, go ahead.”
But a few minutes into the conversation Ed says he noticed a strange pattern developing to the questions. First of all, the “pollster” was only asking about four candidates, three Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, who was still in the race at the time — and one Republican — John McCain.
[..]
Every question about the other candidates was negative. If Ed knew, for instance, that as a state senator Obama had voted “present” 43 times instead of taking a yes or no stand “for what he believed,” would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?
“That’s when I caught on,” said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.
This is sad to see… sowing the voters with lies and falsehoods. If you can’t win an election on the facts, you must not have much of a campaign platform.
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3 Responses to “ Obama Fathered A Black Child! ”
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Trackback from Pensito Review
February 6th, 2008 at 3:50 pmObama Fathered a Black Child
A Town Called Dobson
Love it!
…
February 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am
LOL!!! Obama fathering a black child! That’s a hoot and a half!
Seriously though, you are correct about the push-polling bit. This is why I don’t view a lot of polls and such as having much vericaty; because depending on the question asked (and how it was asked), would determine the answer.
Usually, pollsters like this are fairly well versed in how to phrase a question or statement to get an answer that they want (as opposed to a neutral or honest one).
February 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am
A friend’s daughter, who operates a contract polling service from London, flat out states she couldn’t run her business without promising clients biased polls which appear to be neutral and professionally structured. Another research statistician friend was fired from an academic position for refusing to perpetrate criminal fraud in reporting false data in Federally required audits.
As to Hillary, there are some scary reports circulating about the aggressive tactics used by her campaign workers in some caucus states, which appear to be criminal or otherwise illegal in many cases, but unlikely to be prosecuted as such. One would hope that would cause most voters to oppose any such candidate, GOP or Dem, but the reality is such abuses of law and ethics often work in corrupt party machine operations.
I’d love to see the victims of GOP and Dem machine suppression be nominated, as debates between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would likely be the only combination among contenders that would include honest discussion of serious issues, and reflect different ideological and practical views on what each of those candidates seriously thinks would be beneficial to the country and constituents. Sadly, the fact those candidates do place honest issue oriented debate above pandering to consultants and abusive manipulation tactics is likely why party machine mob bosses tend to do whatever they can to disparage and deny full access to party supports to those contenders.
Somehow, we need a revolution for election process to be “real”. Old Joe Kennedy’s offer of, “I’ll buy you an election, but not a landslide”, has rung true more often than not ever since he first made it.