Opinionated "Opinion Polls"

This election season not all telephone opinion polls are actually polling opinions. According to Mark Blumenthal, a poll analyst for Democratic political candidates, Republican Senate candidates in Maryland and Tennessee are employing a company called ccAdvertising that uses phone calls as “push polls” – these phone calls are disguised as opinion polls, but rather than asking people for their opinions, the calls (millions of which are made each day) are used to spread negative information about the opposing candidates. The calls lure listeners into thinking that they are participating in legitimate polls and then spew “distorted” messages that, according to Blumenthal, campaigns “would never publicly embrace.”