Iowa Pollsters Pushing or Pulling?

Is Barack Obama the victim of yet another internet rumor? This time, the allegation isn't that he's a Muslim, but that's he's engaging in the icky sport of "push polling." (Everybody now: "But what about the politics of hope?!?") A blogger on John Edward's wrote about receiving a call from from a pollster who asked leading questions about Edwards' and Clinton's negative aspects.

Then why do you think Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate and gives 3 choices. A) Is a weak general election candidate. B)Is too dependent on lobbyist money. C) Won't bring change.

Then why do do think John Edwards is a weak candidate with 2 choices A) a weak general election candidate because his positions are too liberal B) He should be home with his wife who has cancer.

The blogger concludes:

This is the lowest form of paid campaigning. there is only 1 candidate that hopes to benefit from this call. Obama.

I expect this from the Republicans in the general but for a so-called Democrat to do this the primary is unforgiveable.

Obama is showing his real character. He cannot be trusted and it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever caucus for him. He isn't fit to carry John Edwards shoes let alone be President.

And, over at MyDD, someone appears to have gotten the same call and has a more detailed write up, and points out that the call itself is best described as "message testing" rather than push polling (Ambinder explains the difference here), and says the pollster identified the organization as "Central Research":

I've gotten several "survey" calls that were basically voter ID calls, paid for by the Obama campaign. But they didn't come from Central Research, and the callers did not hesitate to say that Obama for America paid for the call.

Clearly, though, Obama is the candidate who benefits from this kind of message-testing in Iowa. If Richardson or Biden or Dodd paid for this kind of call, they would also test scripts against Obama.

Is some group that endorsed Obama planning to run ads against Hillary or Edwards? That would be convenient--he could continue to run his "positive" campaign while letting others drag the competition down.

Anyone else have more information on this Central Research firm or on who might be message-testing on Obama's behalf?

There's also a late-breaking theory that perhaps the calls were funded by Republicans doing message-testing against Hillary, and that maybe there have been other calls that name candidates other match-ups besides Hillary and Obama. But there are other, just as devious possibilities -- which Marc also mentions: it could be Hillary testing her own negatives (something candidates do frequently) or it could be Edwards testing his own negatives (as well as Hillary's). All three candidates deny having anything to do with the polls; and, for what it's worth, I don't think Edwards could afford this kind of campaign luxury.

I see that MSNBC has picked up this story, so one would hope that, if there's been a significant number of these calls, more people who have been called will turn up and tell their story. Chuck Todd just mentioned that it could be RNC or, perhaps, an independent group trying to stir up trouble.

I doubt if this is the last time we hear about such calls. That's a bit of an improvement over the pre-blogging era, when these calls happened but we didn't hear about them.