Couple of things jump off the page in this article that makes it seem a touch too breathless…first, contrary to the sub-headline of the article – the attorney general Kelly Ayotte is a  “she”, and not a “he”. Thought we’d clean that one up first. Next, push polls are designed and used to deliver a negative message about a particular candidate to a BROAD group of voters – think thousands, not 400.  Additionally – since the push poll is just a different medium of delivering a negative message on one’s opponent (just like mail, radio, or tv) there’s no need to do an in depth study of the results.  The phone calls that these 400 voters received appear to be genuine voter opinion surveys, with questions designed to see what messages resonated with which segment of voters (hence the 264 page memo).  This type of survey research is standard fare in any professional campaign.  A campaign blessed with strong fundraising would test positive and negative messages (both) of themselves and their opponents to get a true sense of how voters will respond in a campaign environment.

Now, all of that aside – we’re afraid that New Hampshire’s anti-push polling law is on a collision course with a free speech challenge – that very well may stem from this investigation.

Hoping to smoke out the group behind alleged push-polling calls that appeared to target Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney this fall, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte issued an unusual public call for help yesterday.

Ayotte’s plea, at a press conference yesterday afternoon, followed a six-week, three-state investigation that tracked the calls to an Oregon company called Moore-Information but stalled there this week when a court scheduled a hearing for Jan. 16, after the primary.

“I believe the voters of New Hampshire deserve to have these complaints resolved before the presidential primary on Tuesday,” Ayotte said. “So that’s why I’m asking anyone who has information about who hired Moore-Information to conduct these polls and why they were hired to conduct these polls . . . to come forward.”

Read the Rest…