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Editorial: Push polls

Politics has always been a divisive business. While building coalitions, working across the aisle and finding common ground may sound good on paper, it doesn’t get the blood pumping quite so fast as good old-fashioned negative attacks.

One of the more popular ways of sending out negative attacks, while appearing to be impartial, is through the distribution of what purport to be legitimate polls. Most everyone has gotten these “push polls” in the mail, or on the telephone, at one time or another. Here’s a typical question:

“If you knew that Candidate X had a sordid criminal past, including repeated instances of child molestation and drug use, how likely would you be to vote for him in the upcoming election? Please check one of the responses: Would definitely vote for him. Somewhat likely. Not likely. Are you kidding me?”

Now, technically the pollster did nothing wrong. They didn’t say that Candidate X was a pedophile and/or an addict. They ju...

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