Monday, February 25, 2008
News from CCFOG - For Immediate Release
Volunteer Media Contact - Roger Rocka, 325-8618

Lee campaign resorts to "push-polling"
When is a poll not a poll?

District 3 residents were receiving calls this evening from an organization purporting to be conducting a poll about the upcoming election to recall Richard H. Lee from the Clatsop County Commission. But the supposed survey contained only two questions and the second one made it clear the calls were actually a "push-poll."

Those questions were roughly as follows:
1) - If the election were held today, would you support or oppose the recall?
2) - If you knew that the information from CCFOG was false and that the committee was recalling Lee for personal motives, would you still support the recall?

This was not a poll but telemarketing, intended to create a negative view of Clatsop Citizens for Open Government, the group that initiated the recall and collected the hundreds of needed signatures on recall petitions. CCFOG's reasons for recall are supported by independent legal opinions detailing Lee's self-serving actions.

CCFOG believes voters deserve to know about push-polls so they can recognize them as the nasty, negative political trick that they are. CCFOG member Roger Rocka said, "If the Lee campaign had the facts in its favor, it wouldn't need to sink to this level of sneak politics." He urged District 3 voters to vote "yes" on the Lee Recall when their ballots arrive in about two weeks.

Four independent descriptions of "push-polls" are included below.

"A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted, and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll. Push polls are generally viewed as a form of negative campaigning." (Wikipedia)

"One of the nastier political tricks these days is the "push poll." One side of a political debate hires a polling firm to go out and "poll" users on an issue. However, the real purpose isn't finding out how people feel about an issue, but to influence opinions on an issue. That is, the questions on the poll are worded in an extremely biased and leading way to make people think badly about the opposing opinion." (Techdirt)

"A push poll is where, using the guise of opinion polling, disinformation about a candidate or issue is planted in the minds of those being 'surveyed'. Push-polls are designed to shape, rather than measure, public opinion." (Center for Media and Democracy)

The National Council on Public Polls (NCPP) defined a push poll in a 1995 press release as: "A telemarketing technique in which telephone calls are used to canvass vast numbers of potential voters, feeding them false and damaging 'information' about a candidate under the guise of taking a poll to see how this 'information' affects voter preferences. In fact, the intent is to 'push' the voters away from one candidate and toward the opposing candidate. This is clearly political telemarketing, using innuendo and, in many cases, clearly false information to influence voters; there is no intent to conduct research."

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