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No Depths to His Depravity?
The NY Times reports that Michael Bloomberg commissioned a "push poll" last month, in an attack on presumed rival Rep. Anthony Weiner.
For those who aren't up on the term, a "push poll" is where a company calls a lot of voters saying they're conducting a survey, but then asks questions designed to raise doubts about a candidate. In this case, the caller was "asking whether the person’s views of Mr. Weiner would be altered if he or she knew of certain problems involving Mr. Weiner, from missing votes in Congress to having difficulty keeping staff to accepting campaign donations from foreign fashion models"
Many of us remember the Karl Rove "push poll" against John McCain leading up to the 2000 South Carolina primary. In that case, voters were asked if they still supported McCain even if he had "a little black child." (McCain and his wife had adopted a baby from Bangladesh.)
Push polls are among the lowest of the low, even among politicians. It seems that Michael Bloomberg isn't above even that level.
Re: No Depths to His Depravity?
This is not a push poll! Suggest you check the DailyPolitics blog post "Push Back on Push-Pollling." In part it states:
Azi quotes former pollster Peter Feld as saying that that Bloomberg calls don't appear to have gone to a sufficient number of voters to be placed in the "changing minds" column and probably were placed to gather information, not disseminate it.
"Unless he has evidence that many thousands of voters received these calls, and that the Bloomberg survey didn’t follow the template of standard message-testing research, he is simply fooling a gullible reporter," Feld wrote.
"There could hardly be a less effective or efficient way of influencing an election than to call a random sample of several hundred voters, and keep them on the phone for 10, 15 or 20 minutes, eight months before voters go to the polls."
Ben seems to agree, writing:
"...'push poll' is a pollster term of art, with a technical definition - but the main distinction is that a push poll is designed to push a sharp, memorable, negative message, typically right before an election; a message testing poll is designed to test an arsenal of attacks to see which works best, for later mail, television, or other public attacks, not to persuade the call recipient of anything.
"So if Bloomberg is now testing negative messages against Weiner, it does mean the billionaire is plotting to use his personal fortune to destroy a rival, and there's no reason not to describe it that way. Still, not a push poll."
Re: No Depths to His Depravity?
It's surprising that Bloomberg has singled out Weiner instead of Thompson and I wonder why he's set his sights on Weiner, after all, Weiner may not even run or maybe Bloomberg & his goons know more than we do on this matter.
Push polling is usually something you do towards the end of a campaign when your opponent doesn't have time to answer, so why has Bloomberg started now?
Last night my club had the Democratic candidates for Comptroller and 3 candidates showed up (wonder what happened to Weprin). Every member had term limits on their mind and what Bloomberg has done to squash it. Personally, I think Bloomberg is going to have a difficult time winning this election. Sure, his poll numbers are high but when the Dems have a candidate lets see what happens. Bloomberg has been an enemy of the middle class, as Daniel points out, and that's also going to work against his numbers but we have to make sure the Dems use these things against him.