Peekskill residents begin to receive push poll maligning Mary Foster and Domenic Volpe -
Dems call on GOP to cease and desist -

A highly charged push poll maligning Mary Foster and Domenic Volpe has been making the rounds to Peekskill households in the last two days. The caller asks voters whom they support for Mayor and when the respondents answer Mary Foster the interviewer immediately launches into a tirade of negative and inaccurate accusations against Foster and Volpe.

"This is highly unethical and smacks of desperation from Bill Schmidt and George Oros," said Democratic Councilwoman Drew Claxton. "Bill has once again shown his true colors. He was one of the council's most belligerent members, which is exactly why the voters did not re-elect him two years ago. It's unfortunate that he didn't learn from that experience and has come back to run a very nasty campaign."

After several callers complained to the polling firm and threatened legal action, the pollsters identified themselves as RDI Marketing of Cincinnati, Ohio and that they were calling on behalf of William Schmidt. RDI Marketing can be reached at (513) 984-5927.

Push polls are generally used when tracking polls indicate a candidate is behind. George Bush's consultant, Karl Rove, famously used 'push polls' against Sen. John McCain during the 2000 Presidential Primary. They are used as a last ditch effort to smear the front runner.

"After decades of broken promises and failed development projects, the GOP knows it's going to lose its 20-year grip on Peekskill," said Claxton. "The bigger they are the harder they fall. The GOP's political machine has lost its power and we are witnessing the actions of two desperate politicians."

Use of this unethical tactic has drawn condemnation from the American Association of Political Consultants. Below is their statement.

AAPC Board of Directors Declaration Regarding "Push Polling"
On May 23, 1996 the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) received a letter signed by thirty-one of the nation's top public opinion pollsters condemning the increasingly common practice of "push-polling," where phone calls aimed at voter persuasion are dishonestly presented as surveys of public opinion. The AAPC board joined the pollsters in condemning this practice as a clear violation of the AAPC's Code of Ethics and a degradation of the political process.
The AAPC's Ethics Committee addressed this issue in December of 1995, agreeing unanimously that so-called "push-polls" violate the AAPC's stricture against "any activity which would corrupt or degrade the practice of political campaigning." To the extent that practitioners of the "push-poll" ruse convey inaccurate information about an election opponent, they also violate the AAPC's stricture against false and misleading attacks.
The AAPC board notes that so-called "push-polls" are not really polls at all. In their letter, the bipartisan group of survey researchers drew the distinction correctly, as follows:
Legitimate polling firms open each interview by providing the true name of the firm or the telephone research center conducting the interview. Practitioners of so-called "push-polling" generally provide no name, or in some cases make up a name.
In a true opinion survey, research firms interview on a small random sample of the population to be studied, typically ranging from up to a thousand interviews for a major statewide study to as few as 300 in a congressional district. With so-called "push-polls," the objective is to reach a very high percentage of the voters.
The interviews conducted by real polling firms generally range in length from at least five minutes for even the shortest of tracking questionnaires to more than 30 minutes for a major benchmark study. So-called "push-poll" interviews are typically designed to last 30 to 60 seconds.
While real pollsters do sometimes give interviewees new information about a candidate, the intent of this process is not to shift public opinion but to simulate potential campaign debate and to asses how the voter might respond. So-called "push-polls" are designed specifically to persuade.
To our knowledge, there is no overlap whatsoever between legitimate polling firms and firms that conduct so-called "push polls."
The AAPC Board urges the news media and the public to take note of these distinctions and to refrain from characterizing persuasion or advocacy phone calling as "polling." These two campaign services are totally different and should not be confused with each other.The AAPC acknowledges, of course, that voter persuasion by telephone is a perfectly legitimate campaign practice.

What we condemn is advocacy phone calling that:
Masquerades as survey research;
Fails to clearly and accurately identify the sponsor of the call; or
Presents false or misleading information to the voter.