TNR article on possible GOP tinkering w/Dem Primary

This article's saying that Dems aren't responsible for the push-polling that's been going on in NH lately. I didn't think Dean's campaign was doing this.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=chait101003

So I guess according to some opinions Clark and Dean are both GOP (in Clark's case DLC too...how both at the same time not sure) stooges! It's a little confusing to say the least, but then again why am I wasting my time trying to make sense out of conspiracy theories?

DAILY EXPRESS
Push Up
by Jonathan Chait

Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.10.03

Yesterday, PoliticsNH.com reported that "push-polling" has been used to sway New Hampshire voters away from Wesley Clark and toward Howard Dean. Push-polling is a disreputable practice by which callers, posing as pollsters, ask leading questions with slanted information. The purpose is not to measure public opinion but to influence it.

citing: http://www.politicsnh.com/archives/pindell/2003/september/10_8pp.shtml

Sue Mayer,.. said that around 5pm Monday she received a call from a female identifying herself as Shannon working for NH Opinion Research, a group that appears to be bogus.

...

In the next series of questions she said she was asked whether she thought candidate "A", which had the background similar to Gov. Howard Dean's, was best prepared for the presidency or candidate "B", who had a military and non-political background like Clark.

When she said she preferred candidate "B" she was then asked a series, she says, that asked her if she would still support General Clark (saying Clark by name and no longer using terms like candidate "B") more if she had known he had voted for Republicans or had his integrity questions by former General Hugh Shelton, Clark former commanding officer.

"The questions appeared to go from a regular poll that I usually take to getting slimy in tone," Mayer said in an interview. "At one point I said 'what are you doing', but she didn't say anything.

Dean's campaign denied doing this. I believe them because I heard these exact same arguments on NPR yesterday. This is clearly Republican spin.

The question is it Dean they want or is it Clark they want to avoid?

I think they know how to fight Clark but believe they will loose. I have a feeling that they do not know how to fight Dean but think that they can win. There are descenting Republican voices regarding the electoral viablility of Dean but they are not mainstream Republican inside baseball.

I would be interested to see who is paying for these polls.

Let's say the person highlighted has selected the candidate with Dean's background... I would bet that there would then be a series of negative pushpoll questions about Dean.

My guess is they have a multi-tiered script, and that they go to page x when the pollee leans towards candidate x; or go to page z when the pollee leans towards candidate z.

Imagine the overall lack of momentum - if in the key first primary - democratic voter turnout is exceptionally low. That would give a boost to the GOP - when usually what happens in one party's primary does not boost or supress the other party.

Sad thing, imo, if a gop trickster wanted to find info to put into these pushpolls, they need go no further than DU - and to find the recurring smear threads (you know, the ones that one side brings in, is disproven, but gets resurfaced at least three more times). We do the selection for them - as those smears that recur - even when they are disproven - demonstrate that for some skeptics - the smear theme "has longevity".

and nobody said yes. There were a lot of people who responded and a lot of them said they had, but the situations they described were, uniformly, that they had their vague opinions solidified with evidence. Nobody -- well, one person, me -- described a situation where they argued one thing and now feel the opposite. One person said that that happened (in a debate with me, oddly), but then said they thought about the longer, and then decided that the argument that swayed that person then convinced them that their opinion was right in the first place (!) (Incidentally, I think that's a FANTASTIC anectdote describing DU -- even when you feel you've been proven wrong, you turn it in a way to feel you were right.

So, I wouldn't be too worried about people who come voluntarily to DU to talk a lot of shit being swayed. I worry more about people out there who are looking for information.

Incidentally, the woman in this story was a PhD. Some people might not be as sophisticated in picking up on what's going on in that push poll, and those are the people targeted by these polls (also not the kind of people here at DU).

so, even if it is a voter suppression tactic, it will help the Vermonter with the grass roots organizatin and the 200,000 small donors, and not the General from Arkansas.

I think it's obvious who the want the most and the least.

And this isn't the only evidence.