Late last week, a North Carolina musician named David LaMotte received a survey call from Garin-Hart-Yang, the firm of Clinton pollster Geoff Garin. The call, as he reported to HuffingtonPost blogger and DailyKos diarist Paul Loeb, "started out normal enough" but soon "turned to long Hillary-praising and Barack bashing policy statements" with response options that asked him to evaluate each statement. At the end of the call, they asked, "now based on everything we've discussed, who would you vote for?" LaMotte used his telephone answering machine to record the latter half of the call, and as a result was the transcript that Loeb posted at DailyKos and later as streaming audio posted by Loeb, Politico's Ben Smith and ABC's Jake Tapper.
Not surprisingly, much of the commentary about this call focuses on whether the Garin survey meets the classic definition of a "push poll." It does not, at least as far as I can tell.
The call in question was long, included dozens of question that seemed "normal enough" to LaMotte and, as he confirmed to me via email, concluded with a set of demographic items that LaMotte deleted from the audio recording in order to protect his own privacy. This call has none of the hallmarks of the classic, so-called "push poll" intended only to spread a negative message under the false guise of a survey.
It was, rather, a "message testing" survey, albeit one that tested a highly negative and -- to many -- objectionable message. It was not measuring "public opinion" as it exists now but rather voter reactions to a series of positive statements about Hillary Clinton and negative attacks directed at Barack Obama. Garin asked respondents to react to each statement, and subsequently asked a second vote question ("Now based on everything we've discussed, who would you vote for?"), in order to identify the most effective attack and the voters most likely to be swayed by it.
Like it or not, this sort of testing is common in most campaigns, and almost none of the results ever see the light of day. Full disclosure: As a campaign pollster, I helped design hundreds of surveys with similar tests of messages. (I have written previously about the differences between message testing and "push polls,' see also the commentary by Roll Call's Stu Rothenberg and the recent statement on "push polls" and message testing by the American Association for Public Opinion Research-AAPOR).
Of course, simply labeling this survey as "message testing" does not absolve the pollster of ethical constraints. The pollster still has an obligation to tell the truth and treat respondents with fairness and respect. Did this survey do that? LaMotte's audio has the interviewer reading five statements that he describes as "criticisms that opponents might make about Barack Obama." After each of the statements below, the interviewer asks "if they would give you very major doubts, some doubts or no real doubts about supporting Obama."
At a time when we need leaders who are clear, strong and decisive, Obama has been inconsistent, saying he would remove all troops, but then indicating that he might not, and pledging to renegotiate NAFTA, but then sending signals that he would not actually do so as president.
He supported George W. Bush's 2005 energy bill which payed six billion dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, nine billion dollars in subsidies to the coal industry and twelve billion dollars in subsidies to the nuclear power industry. It was called 'a piñata of perks' and 'the best energy bill corporations could buy.
He leads the committee with oversight on Afghanistan but failed to hold a single committee meeting or hearing on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or anything else.
He sided with the credit card companies voting against the bill that would cap interest rates at 30 percent.
While he talks about universal health care he has failed to make the hard choices that would truly get us to universal coverage and lower health care costs for all. His plan would leave 15 million Americans uninsured.
Let's stipulate up-front that the Obama camp vigorously contests these arguments, with some support from journalists. While by no means a complete listing, here are links to reports that provide more context on the NAFTA, energy, credit card, health care and Afghanistan issues. Readers are encouraged to add more in the comments, if warranted.
However, here is the non-rhetorical question that interests me most: How much do these statements differ from those included in Clinton mailers on NAFTA, the energy bill, the credit card bill, health care or Hillary Clinton's statements on the stump about the Afghanistan oversight committee? And if they are essentially the same, why would testing these assertions in the context of a survey be any more or less objectionable than making the same assertions in a debate, a speech, a television ad or a campaign mailer?
[The original version of this post included some extraneous verbiage in the third paragraph that I've cleaned up]