Push-Polling Isn’t Productive
I just finished a 21-minute phone “poll” that started with the usual “who do you intend to vote for” questions, and then went through a series of 15 or 20 questions of the form, “Would knowing the fact that . . . make you more or less likely to vote for Maggie Hassan?” Each of the “facts” either:
1) Contained a falsehood or a strongly contested claim (e.g., “that Maggie Hassan supported President Obama’s Iran deal, which will make it more likely that Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon.” Most experts believe that the deal makes it less likely.)
2) Was taken out of context (e.g., “that even though she promised to reduce college costs, New Hampshire has the highest tuition in the nation and the highest student debt.” Both were true before she became governor, and are still true, even though her budget undid some of the cuts to education funding made by a Republican-controlled Legislature before she was elected.
3) Was irrelevant to her performance as governor or future senator (e.g., “that Maggie Hassan is a muti-millionaire who owns houses in three states.”)
5) Was an attack by association (e.g., “that there was a scandal at Phillips Exeter Academy.” The fact that her husband was head of Phillips Exeter does not make her responsible for scandals there.)
I asked multiple times during the call who sponsored the poll, but she refused to tell me because “it might bias my responses.”
At the end she told me that it was sponsored by the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.
I will answer a question that she failed to ask. “Would knowing the fact that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee sponsored a deceptive push-poll make me more or less likely to vote for Kelly Ayotte?” Answer: much less likely.
Scot Drysdale
Hanover
Allow Research on Gun Violence
I recently wrote to my legislators to remove the current restriction on federal gun-violence prevention research and I wanted to make sure this issue is part of our civic discussion at home as well.
So I’ll first talk about buying a new appliance. How do I do that? I do research! I go to Amazon, I go to Consumer Reports, I go to wherever I can find information about appliances and how they perform. Based on the information that I find, I can then make an informed decision about the appliance to purchase.
And how about new medicines and treatment protocols for diseases? How do we know which ones will work and which ones won’t? Well, we either fund research directly by the federal government or we monitor research funded by private entities to gather data on all aspects of treatments. What is the efficacy, what are the side-effects, how is the drug tolerated with co-morbidities and so on. Without data, we would be no better than those in the 19th century who guessed at the causes of disease based on hunches alone.
Without data, we end up getting answers about how to deal with gun violence from political pundits yammering about their positions with no real data to back up their arguments. My 8th-grade debate teacher would not allow arguments only through the use of emotional rhetoric, yet this is what the lack of any research has produced in our country. The legislation that is being proposed to “fix” the problems we have about gun violence — whether it is at home and part of domestic violence,– or mass shootings in the public sphere — suffers from a profound self-imposed ignorance. It is as if we really don’t want to know how to stop gun violence.
The federal government often channels its research capacity to better understand and explore practical solutions for health emergencies of this magnitude. Yet for 20 years, public health scientists have been unable to explore questions related to gun-violence prevention.
We cannot afford to deny the importance of scientific research in making informed decisions to help save lives.
Paul Courtney
Lebanon