Push-polling starts aimed at Mitt Romney; N.H. launches probe

The Associated Press reported late Thursday that residents of both Iowa and New Hampshire had begun receiving the calls from unidentified callers. Push-polls start out sounding like a normal polling survey but in reality are designed to plant and spread distorted, damaging and often untrue information about a particular candidate, in this case Mitt Romney. He happens to be leading Republican polls in both states.

Because push-pollers also rely on the news media to help spread the same false information, we're not going to do that here except to say the calls involved Romney's Mormon religion. An example of a push-poll question could be: "If you knew that Candidate X had been previously arrested on sexual assault charges, would you be more or less inclined to vote for him?"

It's not the voter's answer that matters; it's that he or she might pass on that rumor to others and affect their vote.

For full story:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/11/pushpoll.html