By John Brummett
So I picked up the phone the other day and a woman presuming to be chatty told me she’d like to bother me for just a second with a couple of survey questions.
She appeared to be a live actual person, rather than a robot, and I grumbled “sure.”
So, John, she asked cheerily, did I consider myself a certain or merely probable voter in the forthcoming Democratic primary? Apparently she had benefit of voter information suggesting I’d be going “D” in the primary, though once I went “R.”
I said certain.
Well, then, John, she asked still cheerily, did I intend to cast my vote for U.S. Senate for Blanche Lincoln or Bill Halter?
Here I must tell you what I told her. You deserve to know. I said Lincoln. I did not do so cheerily. It’s a bit of nose-holder.
At this point my surveyor identified herself as a representative of some nebulous outfit that favored Halter. Then she set out to enumerate several supposedly sinister assaults by Lincoln on the American worker.
After this litany by which Lincoln was made to seem quite horrible, my cheery surveyor asked if I still intended to vote for Lincoln or whether I might have changed my position to Halter.
“Still for Lincoln, now more than ever,” I said, and hung up.
This is an old tactic apparently becoming more common: Some group with a vested interest in a political race pretends to do an honest poll, but then, having you on the horn, switches the survey into outright direct advocacy for one candidate and harsh assault upon the other, then tries to “push” numbers in its favored direction by re-presenting the choice after it has had its incendiary say against the non-favored candidate.
There are four uses for such information: First, it gives you, via that first open-ended question, an honest idea where you stand. Second, it gives you a chance to attack the opposition in a way different from the television advertising that is more expensive and that people may be tuning out. Third, it gives you an idea of the effectiveness of the smears you have in mind against the other candidate. Fourth, via that encore presentation of the choice after the attack on the opponent, it gives you a shot at more favorable numbers that you can leak to the media and show potential contributors to demonstrate the supposedly vibrant viability of your candidacy.
When Steve Womack says he has a poll showing him way out front in the Republican race for Congress in the 3rd District, laugh it off. When Jim Keet says he has a poll showing his defeat of Gov. Mike Beebe a doable proposition, laugh louder.
By the way: I’d like to announce that I have a poll showing my column to be the most widely read feature in this newspaper.
Alas, this is one of those times when I must long for the good ol’ days.
Back before the everything-goes coverage of the Internet by which a candidate touting his own silly poll could get his assertion of vibrant viability regurgitated on a blog or a tweet, the newspapers simply would decline to take seriously any poll results asserted by candidates.
Yes, it was a better time, when responsible newspapers filtered your information.
The late, great Arkansas Gazette had a rule that we didn’t report attacks by one candidate on another on the last day of campaigns. The thinking was that these would be sucker punches and that the candidate attacked might not have a sufficient and fair opportunity to counter a smear.
I asked a grumpy old editor whether we’d report a last-day shooting of one candidate by another. He said only as a short item in the police blotter.
——-
John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
April 13th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
So any candidate in first place with a poll to prove it should be discounted? Illogical.
April 13th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
No, a credible independent poll would prove it. A candidate’s own poll would not prove it, on account of its being assailable as not objective.
April 13th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Just out of curiosity, who’s springing for the next poll? That is completely independent? And scientific? It’s not like you’re spending your hard earned dollars for one. I wouldn’t either. But it seems anyone with an interest in reporting a poll on their own would have some skin in the game, so we can’t trust political groups, “insiders”, or the local papers either right? then who can we trust? Please won’t you just tell us who to vote for, oh columnist John Brummett.
No, don’t really. You just killed Blanche’s last chance.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Who can we trust? I trust, you mean we can trust YOU, Rob?
Thanks for the article, I could not agree more about slanted polls. I probably won’t vote for Blanche, but that’s another column.
April 13th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
I’m just saying I would believe a DC polling firm using a scientific approach over a robo-call poll put out a day later as a response. especially when the data shows that it isn’t even an accurate representation of the true and expected voting behavior. I would love to see a purely independent poll. But like I said, who’s independent and who’s paying going to pay for it?
So we’ve got to choose what to believe: a professional poll or a response.
April 14th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
All you Womack haters out there should just keep telling yourselves that it was a push poll but the number they released was the straight ballot test.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:23 am
“Better time”?
By “responsible newspapers,” do you mean the 1868 Arkansas Gazette that filtered reconstruction efforts out of the news and incited violence or the 1957 Arkansas Democrat that filtered minority voices while glorifying and endorsing bigotry? (See sources below that were found in less than 60 seconds on the “everything-goes” internet.)
Maybe the operative word is “responsible.” Maybe responsibleness will be back with the people now that they are closer to their own primary news sources than ever. Expect some spillage from self-feeders at first though. Weaning isn’t easy after sucking information from the filtered teat of the status quo for more than 200 years.
People have it in them. If you were a real socialist, you’d know that.
http://books.google.com/books?id=nvmc_YXsSx4C&pg=PA498&lpg=PA498&dq=ruled+by+race+stockley+%22arkansas+gazette%22+1968&source=bl&ots=TAT6c6nZDX&sig=pFASXb7EBAuxjz4dcAmf_PPeJc8&hl=en&ei=ZJrGS8OcCpfKM5D-1bwI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol3no1/3.1%20Negro%20Notes%20Blk%20Press.pdf
norgi
arkansas free press
April 15th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Actually, no, Norg, I was not referring to 1868 and Reconstruction, which does not strike me as a better time. I was referring specifically to a time I personally experienced in the latter half of the last century when tough old editors with high news thresholds kept a lot of this political nonsense out of the paper. I get your point, though. One man’s responsible editing might be another man’s suppression. Apparently it’s an imperfect world big enough for different views.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Right on, man.