A congressional candidate frantically relayed a message to me last Friday about a poll that was “sent to us as an FYI” but “was not a poll commissioned by our campaign.” The poll showed her leading the primary race.
Those caveats were enough of a red flag for anyone to question the poll’s veracity. But what her consultant emailed to me wasn’t a poll. There were no crosstabs. I had never heard of the pollster. Nobody could tell me who paid for it.
The “poll” was nothing more than a bar chart showing this candidate leading the incumbent in the Democratic primary.
The candidate hoped that I would post it on Political Wire. Obviously, I wasn’t going to do that.
But what shocked me in the days ahead was how this “poll” made its way into the political discussion. It was posted on several local political blogs. It was debated fiercely on social media. The candidate’s supporters — including other local elected officials — lent their own credibility to the “poll” by sending it out in personal emails to their friends.
The candidate herself — who had earlier attempted to keep some distance from the poll with the caveats cited above — embraced it and even included it in her final campaign email.
In the end, while the “poll” showed her leading the incumbent by four percentage points, the primary results last night found her losing to him by almost 40 percentage points.
That’s not a mistake within any normal margin of error. The “poll” appears to be fake. And it was used by the campaign to mislead voters and donors.
As a wise friend told me yesterday:
Campaigns place enormous stress on one’s ethical compass. They’re an interesting and revealing test of character.
