I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Weh campaign spokesman Chris Sanchez simply told The Independent: “The Tarrance Group does not do push polls.”
The Tarrance Group is the polling company that Weh has hired for his campaign; it has previously been accused of push polling.
Blogger Joe Monahan reported Friday that the Weh campaign had been push polling against Susana Martinez, one of his opponents in the GOP primary for the governor’s race.
Monahan cited “watchers” who said they received the push poll on Wednesday night. The report was circulated to the press by the state Democratic Party.
This isn’t the first time that the Tarrance Group has been accused of push polling — perhaps incorrectly. In 2006, the company was accused of push polling in two congressional races ahead of the general election.
When discussing that incident, Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal wrote:
With all due respect to Sargent and his source, Mickey Carroll of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, both are using the wrong definition of “push polling.” It is certainly more than poll questions that feed “the negative stuff,” as Carroll puts it. A true push poll is not a poll at all. It is a telemarketing smear masquerading as a poll.
There is always confusion between candidates testing possible attacks on their opponents and push polling. A push poll is merely spreading a negative message to as many people as possible without regard for any actual results — a poll testing negative messages is to judge what attacks in the coming weeks will be most effective.
Pollster.com has written many times about push polls and the difficulty in reporting about what push polls are.
And my go-to resource on the definition of polling is the definition from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR):
AAPOR defines a push poll as unethical political telemarketing, calls disguised as research that are designed to persuade large numbers of voters — not to measure opinion.
“Negative or disturbing information about a candidate does not automatically make a survey a push poll,” said AAPOR President Nancy Mathiowetz. “Message testing, when campaigns test the effectiveness of possible messages about opponents and even themselves, is very different; and it is a legitimate form of surveying.”
