Push polls are fake surveys used to influence opinions, often in political campaigns. They use negatively framed questions and misinformation to plant doubt in voters’ minds. Legitimate polls are shorter and ask for demographic information. Push polling is frowned upon and often funded by third-party groups.
A push poll is a sly marketing technique that pretends to be a survey in hopes of influencing opinion, essentially nudging people into a desired mindset. Push polls are opposed by many professional polls and political organizations as they are fake and potentially very dangerous. They are classically used in close-quarters political campaigning or to fight against proposed measures and legislation for a vote. There are several ways to identify a push survey, and you should learn how to spot one so that you can gauge the experience of a survey and determine whether or not it was legitimate.
In the case of a political push poll, the “polling” agency calls thousands of homes and asks voters a series of short questions that tend to be framed very negatively. These questions sometimes contain blatant misinformation, but they plant seeds of doubt in the minds of voters. For example, a push poller might ask, “Would you be less likely to vote for candidate Y if you knew he was gay?” At the end of the “poll”, the voter has internalized the content of the short poll and this can influence the voter when he votes, approves candidates or talks about political issues.
There are different types of push polls. The more benign are simply designed to make people think about an issue, while the more aggressive polls defame opposing candidates or viewpoints. The questions used in push polling are often very important, and sometimes devious, because they are designed to subtly spread disinformation.
The first sign that you are engaged in a push survey is the length of conversation you have with the alleged pollster. If a political poll lasts about twenty minutes or more, it’s probably a legitimate poll. It might also contain some negatively worded questions, but the questions are usually repeated for each candidate or issue as part of the research tool to learn more about voters’ opinions. Also, the pollster in a push survey often doesn’t ask for demographic information, which is a key part of any real survey. Additionally, push polling agencies rarely identify themselves or the campaigns they work with.
Because push polling is frowned upon by most of the political community, political campaigns are generally careful to distance themselves from push polling. These “surveys” are often funded by groups that support a particular candidate, allowing the candidate to have no knowledge of the survey. They are administered by companies that specialize in telemarketing, as push polling is simply a form of telemarketing.
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