What is Push Polling?
A push poll is a crafty marketing technique which pretends to be a poll in the hopes of influencing opinion, essentially pushing people into a desired mindset. Push polls are opposed by many professional polling and political organizations since they are disingenuous and potentially very dangerous. They are classically used in close political campaigns or to fight proposed ballot measures and legislation. There are a number of ways to identify a push poll, and you should learn how to spot one so that you can evaluate the experience of a poll and determine whether or not it was legitimate. In the case of a political push poll, the “polling” agency calls thousands of homes and asks voters a series of brief questions which tend to be framed in a very negative way. These questions sometimes contain obvious misinformation, but they plant the seeds of doubt in voters minds. For example, a push poller might ask “Would you be less likely to vote for candidate Y if you knew that he was gay?” At
