Push Polls Attack and Smear, Says Analyst Larry Sabato

Aired February 12, 1996 4:16 pm

BERNARD SHAW, Anchor: Chances are your civics teacher mentioned anything about push polls and killer phone banks. Joining us from Charlottesville, Virginia, is the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato, who has just written a book called Dirty Little Secrets - The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics.

Larry, what do you make of this?

Prof. LARRY SABATO, Political Analyst: Well, Bernie, it's difficult to say about this specific instance, but my co-author, Glenn Simpson [sp] of the Wall Street Journal, and myself, over a two-year period did an extensive investigation into this practice called push polling, and what we learned was exceedingly disturbing. This has become all the rage in American politics and, as Marc Watts reported, accurately, there are two different kinds of push polling; one is legitimate and one is not. The legitimate form of push polling is a research poll in which a candidate tries to find out what his opponents' weaknesses and strengths are in order to test the campaign message, to prepare the media advertisements, and so on. The illegitimate form of push polling is the nasty, negative message that goes out anonymously. This is happening increasingly. It is occurring all through the United States, and we were able to document more than three dozen instances, major instances, during congressional campaigns in 1994.

SHAW: Well, to be very blunt about it, what you're talking about is these are actually attacks- this is actually covert negative campaigning, isn't it?

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SABATO: You're absolutely right, and you know, Bernie, we all put so much emphasis on the TV ads, and that's a good thing to do because we need to have those kinds of fact checks and reality checks like CNN does, but the problem with this telephone polling, or non-polling, is that this is flying right under the radar. The press isn't covering it because, for the most part, it doesn't hear about it or it's very difficult to document, as in this case. But I mean this is nasty stuff. You take the TV ads, as bad as they are, multiply them by 10. Nasty negative messages that frequently are totally false. For example, in 1994, we found three candidates for Congress, a couple of them incumbent congressmen, whose districts, or states, were deluged with thousands of calls in the week prior to the election, saying outright that they were gay, that they were lesbian or gay, and, of course, that had an impact in some of those districts, and it was disastrous for them; in fact, all of these candidates lost.

SHAW: And in the 10 seconds we have left, what makes it so bludgeoning on the telephone is the fact that it's computer-driven sometimes.

SABATO: Some of the calls are computer-driven, some of them come from these telemarketing firms, and, incidentally, I'm inclined very much to believe the gentleman that Mr. Watts found, because we have a source in a rival telemarketing firm that reports very much the same thing as he has reported in this campaign.

SHAW: University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato, thanks very much for joining us.

SABATO: Thank you.

SHAW: You're welcome.

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