Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Democrats and Harry Mitchell issue push-poll to pretend that Mitchell is not far behind Schweikert in the polls

This is pretty amusing, and reveals how desperate the Harry Mitchell campaign has become. The Schweikert campaign started hearing reports last week that voters in AZ District 5 were receiving phone calls about the Schweikert-Mitchell race, heavily slanted to make Schweikert sound like a gremlin in order to have the voters identify with Mitchell. Sure enough, the phony push-poll results were released this week, showing Mitchell leading Schweikert by one point. The poll made no sense, since recent polling in the race shows Schweikert comfortably ahead of Mitchell by 6 points, and internal polling by the Schweikert campaign  has Schweikert up by as much as 12 points.

Sure enough, the company behind the push-poll is Harstad Strategic Research, owned by Paul Harstad, a former campaign pollster for President Obama and Democrat Senator Paul Harkin of Iowa. This is not the first time this company has been utilized by Democrats for dirty politicking.
Mitchell is desperate since the Democrats have decided to withdraw the millions they were going to spend on his race, and the AFL-CIO has too, writing it off in favor of Congressional elections in other states where they have a better chance at retaining seats. Whereas Schweikert is getting millions from the NRCC, Club for Growth, and the 60 Plus Association, an independent expenditure committee. Due to the latter organization's TV ads, Schweikert has more airtime running now than Mitchell. Mitchell is desperate to catch up, but with early ballots being sent out in two weeks, even a fake push-poll won't save him from his liberal record of voting with Pelosi in support of the Obama administration and big spending. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I checked the story out. Even his internal poll showed him at 47 percent vs. Schweikert's 46 percent. When you have your own partisan poll showing you below 50 percent, you are in dangerous territory.