Push or poll? Vermonters riled over campaign poll questions

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted July 21, 2006

Vermonters are decrying two separate polls posing negative questions about state Sen. Peter Welch, the Democratic candidate for Vermont’s lone seat in the U.S. House.

The first the poll is linked to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), according to a recent filing with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
On July 11, just hours after Republican Martha Rainville called on her primary opponent and Welch to join her in a clean campaign on the issues, the NRCC reported to the FEC that it had spent $21,000 on a poll done by the Tarrance Group on Rainville’s behalf.

Those polls were conducted shortly after the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

People interviewed by the Guardian said they were asked if they would be “more or less inclined to vote for Peter Welch if you knew he supported a Hillary Clinton-style health care program that takes away your choice of doctor and puts it in the hands of bureaucrats?”

Another question was, “Would you be more or less inclined to vote for Peter Welch if you knew he didn’t let his principles get in the way of making money?”

Another asked if people knew that Welch supported raising taxes, but twice failed to pay his own property taxes on time.

Secretary of State Deb Markowitz has confirmed that her office has received several formal complaints about the polls, with more expected this week.

However, nowhere in state law is a so-called “push poll” defined or banned, and it is unclear if the Vermont law that defines “electioneering communications” includes calls from polling firms, or would even apply in federal races. Federal rules generally define electioneering communications as mailings or items over broadcast media.

While some Vermonters link the recent calls to push polls, — which are designed to change minds — at least one industry insider said they are more along the lines of polls designed to test negative campaign messages.

Still, it may mark a new tactic in Vermont, one Vermonters may not stomach, especially since Election Day is still several months off.

When asked by reporters about the Tarrance Group poll, Rainville said she didn’t know if some of the poll questions were, in fact, negative, or simply about Welch’s record.

“I know there is a get-out-the-vote effort by both parties and that Vermonters have received calls from the Republicans and the Democrats,” Rainville told reporters at a news conference.

She said she was unaware of the poll’s existence, and said if the questions were misleading or inaccurate, she would ask them to stop. But she declined several times to say whether she thought some of the questions, which several reporters repeated for her, were negative.

“I don’t see the health care question as attacking my opponent,” she said.

“I have said that I am not going to send negative mailings and intend to keep it that way,” Rainville said. “I expect more polls from a number of groups … . This race has the potential to become overwhelming to people.”

She said she has no control over what others do in the race, and can only control what her campaign does.

However, a new poll presents more positive messages about Rainville and perceived negative messages about Welch, according to those interviewed by the Guardian. In each of those cases, the pollster would not reveal who was paying for the survey, they said.

These new polls are not being paid for by the NRCC, said Ed Patru, an NRCC spokesman.

Patru would not say what the results of the earlier poll were, but only pointed to earlier polls that show the Welch-Rainville match-up continues to be a “neck and neck race.” The polls Patru referenced were conducted in June.

The second poll is being conducted by interviewers from Venture Data, according to individuals contacted by the Guardian.

A Rainville campaign spokesman would not confirm or deny if they were conducting a poll right now, and said they were using Public Opinion Strategies (POS) for polling. This is the same firm used by U.S. senatorial hopeful Rich Tarrant, a Republican. Earlier this year, a poll connected to Tarrant was conducted by POS and carried out by Venture Data.

“We’re not going to say if we have a poll in the field or not, that’s an internal campaign strategy,” said Brendan McKenna, Rainville’s communications director.

“There will be polls in this race, I’m certain of that,” he added. “Our polls will stick to the facts and stick to the issues. They will be routine polls asking opinions on many issues. We pledge to run a clean campaign.”

McKenna said Rainville wants polls that give her good information.

Taking down names

While polling, or independent expenditures, are not unusual in a political race, several Vermonters contacted by the Guardian were openly dismayed by the tone of the questions, and said it’s already turned them against Rainville’s candidacy.

“I was honestly not sure how I was going to vote, but I can tell already that Martha Rainville is playing dirty politics,” said Donna Milaschewski, of Fairfax, who received a poll call on July 18. “The poll started out more innocent and was asking how I voted on some issues, then as I answered questions from a more Democratic point of view it would generate these series of statements.”

One of those statements, she said, indicated that “Rainville would stand up to the president and has fought to protect the Guard by fighting for better helmets, while Welch doesn’t care about the Guard and only wants to pull the troops out of Iraq.”

Milaschewski said the tone of the questions so angered her that she got a supervisor on the phone and asked them delete all of her answers.

“They call this a poll, but it was a guise and I want others to not be fooled, because we don’t want to play games with this election and I think Martha Rainville is already starting the dirty politics, and though this poll said she would stand up to Bush, all I see is her standing behind him,” Milaschewski said.

Milaschewski said she too has stood by the president until now, and just can’t do it this election cycle, nor can she now support Rainville.

“I’m just tired of all the lies,” she said.

Ancy Tempesta, of Wolcott, who describes herself an independent who has voted for plenty of Republicans, was also dismayed by a similar survey on July 5.

“I’ve gotten other political questions in the past, but not in a way that was trying to turn me against somebody, and that’s what this was,” Tempesta said. “It was definitely designed to turn me against someone and use my answers to say that people who know such and such about Peter Welch are less likely to vote for him.”

Tempesta said she was asked about the Hillary Clinton-style health care proposal.

“I’m a nurse and I’ve worked in health care for the last 30 years and I know for a fact that criticism is baloney, and I said that to him,” she said. “If you have Blue Cross-Blue Shield you already have strangers making decisions about your heath care and it was so blatantly twisted.”

While Tempesta said she primarily votes for Democrats, she had not yet had time to vet the House candidates. After this poll, she says she doesn’t have to. She’s voting for Welch.

“My feeling is that Rainville wouldn’t be condoning something like that,” said Tempesta. “And I don’t have anything against Rainville, except if she is powerless to stop this kind of stuff it makes me think she is also going to be powerless once she gets in there.”

When a poll isn’t a poll

A spokesman for one of the nation’s top polling firms, Zogby International, declined to comment on the nature of the questions asked in the Vermont polls, but did offer some insight on polling in general, and testing negative messages.

“First, it is completely legit to test messages. Huge corporations do it before a product rollout or to figure out why something isn’t selling, etc, and pols do it, too. It is almost irresponsible not to test how various messages are going to be received by a target audience. However, there are some strict guidelines by which we abide when we message test for political clients,” said Fritz Wenzel, Zogby’s communications director.

“If the client also wants a horserace measurement, we always ask that first, before introducing any information about the race or candidates. We will also ask that later to see how certain messages may have affected the views of respondents, but we never, ever represent that second, third, fourth, or fifth horserace question as the ‘real’ horserace question, because it is a skewed measurement of public opinion based on issues injected into the respondent’s head. It is not a fair representation of public opinion at large,” Wenzel added.

Wenzel said the public may not discern a difference between testing a negative message and a push poll, but in his line of work there is an important difference.

“It is important to note that professional pollsters don’t really do push polling, anyway. Remember that push polling is a practice employed by campaigns to change significant volumes of minds by poisoning them toward one person or another, or perhaps against an idea, proposal, or political party.

“Such ‘polls’ are not designed to test public opinion. Our sample sizes are simply too small to have any impact on any political race, and there is no way a client could afford to pay us to change one mind at a time,” said Wenzel.

Welch’s campaign has also paid for polls, and tested “negative” messages. The difference, said Welch’s campaign manager, Carolyn Dwyer, is that the questions were based on issues and facts, not designed to trigger an emotional response.

“There is a difference in testing messages, and the questions we asked were more or less along the lines of ‘Would you be more or less inclined to vote for Martha Rainville if you knew she voted for President Bush twice?’ or ‘Would you be inclined to vote for her if you knew she supported the president’s tax cuts, or the war in Iraq?’ Those are facts, and about issues,” said Dwyer.

Markowitz said whether polls like this should be included or considered a political advertisement is a question for the attorney general’s office to consider as compaints come in and are investigated.

Until then, it may just be public awareness and public pressure that can make the campaigns take notice, rather than a civil fine.

“We’ve heard enough from voters that they don’t like it and that they think it’s not playing fair, and at some point the candidates and campaigns are going to have to take that into consideration,” said Markowitz.