Polls Don't Lie -- Or Do They?

You know the kind of phone call it was – you’ve probably avoided them as much as I have because they just take forever. “Hi, my name is so-and-so from the Tarrance Group,” came the voice on the other end, “and we’d like to take a few minutes of your time to ask you about the upcoming elections.”

This time, for whatever reason, I decided to take the call. It was around September 11, and I was feeling reflective.

They started simply with questions about my particular background. But then they asked the questions that alerted me to what was really happening. “Questions” worded like, “Democrats such as Tammy Duckworth will make the country weaker and less able to respond to terrorism. Does knowing this make you more likely to vote Democratic in the upcoming elections?” Or “Democrats want to make it easier for illegal immigrants to get into the country and take American jobs. Does this make you more likely to vote Democratic?”

When the phone call was over, I was outraged. Obviously, this wasn’t a legitimate poll, but had been designed to sway me against Tammy Duckworth and other Democratic candidates. I recognized the phone call as a form of “push-polling,” a negative-campaigning technique that tries to plant misleading, incomplete, or just plain biased ideas in voters’ heads to try and sway them to vote a certain way.

The National Council on Public Polls calls push polls “a growing and thoroughly unethical political campaign technique.” In fact, in many areas of the country, they’re considered so unethical that they’re illegal.

The phone call was enough to plant me firmly against Peter Roskam. And after a few minutes of Web research, I found out a few things that made me realize that Tammy Duckworth has to win this election – if only to keep guys like Peter Roskam out of office.

Peter Roskam had paid The Tarrance Group to make the phone call I had just received. And The Tarrance Group itself had been reprimanded before for illegal push-polling. If you remember, these are the same types of people who spread the rumors that McCain had fathered a baby with a prostitute. The baby turned out to be a Bangladeshi girl he and his wife had adopted years before.

I started to pay attention. Then I noticed the mailings from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) trying to scare us against Duckworth. The ones with ghosts on the front and headlines like, “Tammy Duckworth doesn’t want your roads to be fixed.” How idiotic is that statement? Obviously, she’s not against our roads being fixed, but the Republicans are trying to paint her opposition to earmarking as opposition to public works. There are many reasons to oppose earmarking, not the least of which is that it goes under another, more negative name: “pork”. It holds up legislation, encourages back-room politicking, and costs taxpayers even more money. Other mailings were just as idiotic and misleading.

Peter Roskam himself has already been caught lying about some of Duckworth’s policies, saying she’s for amnesty for illegal immigrants, when she has stated her support for the McCain immigration bill that DOES NOT grant amnesty for illegals.

The Tarrance Group says it works to help “Republican” candidates get elected, and also says, “All of these clients would say one thing about The Tarrance Group: We hate to lose.” Well, apparently they are so worried about losing that they’re willing to do anything to win. And that goes for Peter Roskam, too. We deserve better than a candidate who would stoop to such low levels to get elected.

And that means I voted for Tammy Duckworth.