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"Pushed" has two meanings in the polling community, one of them ordinary and the other one unprofessional. The normal one applies here. Pushed for this poll means that whenever a poll respondent answered, "I don't know," he/she would be "pushed" with the additional question, "Which way are you leaning?"

Then, the "leaners" are added to the total for whichever candidate they named, and the "don't know" category shrinks accordingly. This is a normal technique, but should be revealed when used, so these poll results can be properly compared to other polls which did the same thing. It was revealed here.

The prejudicial use of "pushing" means shaping the poll to create the desired result. A question like this might be asked: "Would you still support Senator Snort if you knew that he frequently dressed in women's clothing?" No poll that uses push questions like this is legitimate. Unethical pollsters who use such questions conceal this, if they can get away with it.

Hope that information is helpful.

Congressman Billybob

Click here, then click the blue CFR button, to join the anti-CFR effort (or visit the "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob" thread). Please do it now.

"Would you still support Senator Snort if you knew that he frequently dressed in women's clothing?" No poll that uses push questions like this is legitimate. Unethical pollsters who use such questions conceal this, if they can get away with it.

A variation of this would be to simply ask respondents various questions about unemployment, deaths in Iraq, etc., and THEN follow those questions up with the horse race question/

No poll that uses push questions like this is legitimate. Unethical pollsters who use such questions conceal this, if they can get away with it.

Thanks for chiming in with this. Way too many folks here seem to claim that any poll whose results they disagree with is a "push poll." The purpose of a push poll, in any case, is not even to get a bogus result. It is a campaign commercial done via the telephone, disguised as a poll so that the respondent isn't aware that it is a commmercial. Its intention is to "push" voters away from an opponent and toward the candidate who paid for the calls.