It's Push Poll Time in Connecticut

I just got off the phone with a "polling" organization that was engaged in push polling for the Democrat Dan Malloy running for governor of Connecticut.  Push polling, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a tactic used by some political campaigns in which they call voters supposedly to ask polling questions and then read a series of attack statements to determine whether or not those statements change the view of the person being polled.  The reality is something quite different.  In actual fact, the "polls" are an effort to get voters who will listen to attacks on the opponent so that they can then be "asked" if their views have changed.  In that way, voters are fed attacks on a politician to which they carefully listen without knowing that the attack is coming from that politician's opponents.  The "poll" to which I responded asked me about my planned vote in the race for governor and then subjected me to a series of "statements" about Republican Tom Foley that were supposed to make me support the Democrat.  It was amazing to me to hear some of the charges that the supposed pollster was leveling at the Republican.  They included charges that I knew to be untrue.  When the polling questions were completed, I asked the pollster for whom the poll was being done, but she would not tell me.  I then asked her for the name of the polling firm and again she would not tell me.  Normally, a pollster will at least identify the name of the polling company.  I went back to my Caller ID list on my phone to see if the pollster was identified; not surprisingly, all I got was that the call came from "private number".

I know that Malloy has decided to run a very negative campaign in his effort to win at any cost.  Even so, the tactic of push polling is particularly dishonest and it ought to have no place in our politics.  There is no reason for voters to be fed false attack statements as a candidate tries to trick his or her way into winning an election.  The old adage is that "politics is not bean bag."  That may be correct.  Nevertheless, campaigns for governor should not be run on the basis of lies.  I would have voted for Foley without this poll, but the use of these tactics make that decision all the more correct.