Its still not clear who is behind the push polling, first reported by American Research Group in their daily NH tracking poll today.
I am doing some reporting on the american primary election for my german readers and thought: "Why not call ARG?" And I just did...
I had a nice conversation with ARG president Dick Bennett and he revealed the following:
- He couldnt specify how many respondents were affected by the push polling, but said that "it was significant enough that the supervisor for that last two nights polling brought it up to him".
- The respondents obviously werent told, which campaign they were called by, just that it was a campaign.
- Some readers on this blog wondered how the issue came up at all in the interviews with ARG. Mr. Bennett says, they got responses like "It doesnt matter whom I like to vote for, because I am not eligible to vote" and then of course ARG asked why.
- The reason ARG made this information public was that the push polling hurts their ability to find respondents who are willing to do interviews, which sounds very reasonable to me.
- Mr. Bennett disagrees with the claim by some on this board, that push polling telling voters that they are not allowed to vote, amounts to voter disenfranchisement and is therefore illegal. He thinks that it is still within the law to do so and not too unusual for NH politics.
- Mr. Bennett wouldnt be surprised if the winner in Iowa gets a 10-15% bounce which would be within historical precedent. He actually said, that there have been 20% bounces.
- I also got the information, that Clarks numbers in yesterdays sample was at 22%.
