Relatively quick drive-by diary here -- just got home from work and when I walked in the door my phone rang and it was a caller claiming to be from a company called "Western Wats" (caller ID read Flagstaff, AZ) wanting to ask me about the presidential election.
The call started out rather normally -- they asked for party ID, demographic info, and favorable/unfavorable ratings for the major candidates, as well as Rudy Giuliani (which I thought was odd). They asked my preference and asked how likely I was to vote and if I had voted in the previous election -- I told them I had already voted absentee but they had no option for that (red flag!)
They did a portion where they said statements like "John McCain is erratic in a crisis," "Sarah Palin is unqualified to be vice-president," "Barack Obama's associations with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is troubling" and asked me to rate them as true or untrue. There were all negatives, and they did go to each side.
Then the caller said "I'm going to read you a series of statements and we'd like you to tell me if they would make you more or less likely to vote for Barack Obama." They weren't simple things like "Barack Obama is a muslim," they were more like scripts for TV ads. Things like "An announcer comes on and says 'Barack Obama isn't telling the truth about ACORN' etc." I don't remember the exact wording, but the first one was an ad that featured Rudy Giuliani talked about Obama's connection to Bill Ayers. The second ad was a rambling piece that linked Obama and "Congressional Liberals" to ACORN and the failing of the housing market and the economy. Possible future lines of attack in the next 10 days? Neither ad is something I've seen here in VA or read about anywhere.
Finally, they DID have an anti-McCain ad about health care that sounded like an Obama ad I've seen (Taxing health care for the first time).
Couple of follow-up demographic questions and it was over.
The interesting thing I found was the connection to Rudy Giuliani. The only thing I could find on Google about Western Wats was a push poll they were connected with attacking Romney. If memory serves, Giuliani saw Romney as his main rival during the primaries.
Now, the caveat here is that I DID indicate my preference toward voting for Obama so maybe that triggered a specific script, but this firm has been linked to push polls in the past and so I thought maybe this is something a bit more sinister.
At the end I asked the caller to re-state the company he worked for and if he knew who commissioned the poll -- he said he didn't know, he just had the script and made the calls. There wasn't really any emotion in his voice throughout the call though he stumbled with the script a few times.
Phew! I just wrote that extremely fast so please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors -- I'll be sure to correct anything that is commented upon. Thoughts? What should I do?