MT-Sen: What do we know about anti-Baucus push poll?

With the Montana primary approaching, I just received an anti-Baucus push poll that was fairly well disguised as a legitimate poll. It wasn't particularily nasty, but with standard push poll types of questions like "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Baucus if you knew he voted to raise your taxes over 200 times?" Has anyone else in Montana received this call yet?

All I could get from the questioner was that he was calling out of New York and worked for "Central Research."  I don't know if the fact that he had trouble reading the questions had anything to do with the nature of the outfit. Has anyone heard about this?  Is this sufficiently egregious that we should look into it, or has this become standard campaign fare?

More details below...

The poll started off with a few minutes of various standard poll questions about voting preference, candidate favorability, and opinions on standard issues.  They asked about all federal offices in Montana as well as Governor Schweitzer (which he couldn't pronounce correctly). Although they tried to mix things up pretty well, it was clear they were focusing on Max Baucus (he even had trouble with that one).

After a couple of rounds of that, it went directly to the push poll, starting with "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Baucus if you knew the following statements to be true." I refused to answer each one of these, but stayed for all 10-15 of them to see what was going on.

They were fairly standard loaded questions on hot button issues like ANWR, the "death tax," gay marriage, and Congressional pay raises (e.g. "His salary has tripled while median income for Montanans has gone down.")

They then of course ended with the classic question: "Knowing the above statement to be true, NOW would you be willing to vote for Baucus regardless of his opponent?"  

Besides being a push poll, I assume this was an attempt to find out which attack ads would have the most effect with voters - the questions were worded as typical attack-ad rhetoric.

What do we do about these things?  I don't have time to go on a lone crusade to figure this out and complain, but I would certainly participate if others wanted to look into it.

Has anyone else in Montana received this call yet?

•  Republicans are spending $ against Baucus?

  This is sure evidence that the GOP is in a completely dysfunctional state.  They have no chance to unseat Baucus.  This is throwing good money at bad.

  by rustydude on Fri May 16, 2008 at 07:28:45 PM PDT

  •  I thought it was called

    the "50 state strategy."

    by inside 4ll on Fri May 16, 2008 at 07:46:54 PM PDT

  •  Yes, it can't make much difference

    While I'm sure such a poll can't cost too much, it does seem like kind of a misguided effort.  I suppose we should just be happy to see them wasting money.  

    It would be interesting to know who was doing this, however, as I would assume they are doing the same thing in other states as well.  I wouldn't know how to find that out, however.  It seems pretty easy for them to cover their tracks these days.

    by jockyoung on Fri May 16, 2008 at 07:59:49 PM PDT

•  Haven't gotten this call yet

  But nasty push polls have been common in Montana campaigns, at least in the fall season.

  People here in west central Montana have been innundated with Obama calls, but not push polls as yet.

  by Ed in Montana on Fri May 16, 2008 at 07:33:08 PM PDT

•  Not really a push poll

  Generally, a true push poll contains very few questions, because they're not actually collecting any data; they're putting out their message to as many people as they possibly can, and they're not going to spend extra time on the phone.

  The cost of getting you on the phone and keeping you on it for five minutes isn't insignificant; you can be sure they're doing several hundred of these calls to test their negative messages, as opposed to tens of thousands to spread the message.

  by kenboy on Fri May 16, 2008 at 08:01:03 PM PDT

•  Always insist on knowing the firm the researcher

  works for - that helps connect dots later on; no one is going to be allowed to tell you who the client is, but they are required by law to acknowledge their direct employer. Ask for a supervisor after cooperating with their survey.
  (I'm not saying answer truthfully, but give them an answr if you want to hear the rest of the questions.)

  by Tomsank on Fri May 16, 2008 at 09:06:47 PM PDT

•  I haven't gotten this call yet

  But it's clearly evidence of how damned nasty our Republican's are.

  I'm sure the nationals have a hand in it, too.

  by jhwygirl on Sat May 17, 2008 at 09:45:03 AM PDT

•  I had to get this out there jockyoung

  I've also contacted some party officials

  See it here.

  by jhwygirl on Sat May 17, 2008 at 10:16:11 AM PDT