A Pole in the Field?

No, we're talking about a Poll in the Field, here in Woodbridge to be exact.

Did you get a phone call last week? Mine came on Thursday (4/10) -- it seems someone is awful interested in the electoral inclinations in lil' ol' Woodbridge. Right before my phone rang, someone told me about the call they received, so, curiosity aroused, I was sure to catch the name of the polling firm. It was Mountain West Research (and, for what it's worth, the caller did not seem to be a native English speaker, so it certainly seems possible that the call center is located outside the US, as has been surmised in the past with this company).

The poll ran through questions regarding Obama, Clinton and McCain; asked if I considered myself a Democrat, Republican or "Independent" and then asked state-level questions (was my opinion of Governor Rell very favorable, favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or unfavorable). I was asked what my voting priorities were (the list was lower taxes, health insurance, education, etc.) and then what the likelihood of my voting in November would be (I could not persuade the caller to mark me as "definitely going to vote" -- she insisted I pick between very likely, likely, not very likely, will not -- or somesuch nonsense!).

The remaining questions then clearly settled in on the state representative race in our little district. I was asked if I was familiar with a certain potential Democratic candidate, and then what my opinion of her was, and my opinion of the current office-holder.

After it was all over, I did a quick Google and came up with this illustrious history of Mountain West Research in CT -- the notorious alleged "push poll" calls, believed to be from Joe Lieberman just before he jumped ship/the shark on us during his campaign against Ned Lamont. And before that, Mountain West apparently did some polling for Bob Dole's presidential bid in 1996 as well.

So (although I didn't need the research to tell me this, based on the way issues were phrased with a decidedly GOP-slant to them), the call I received sounded like it was a Republican-sponsored poll. Now the question is; who could be asking such detailed questions about our local race for State Representative, while simultaneously badly mangling the pronunciation of the first name of our current (GOP) representative?

Well, those (Republican!) call center polling companies aren't perfect, you know!
Yeah, that's the motto at the Mountain West Research website -- I'm not making that up!