South Carolina’s special election just got a little bit dirtier, with a conservative group reportedly using push polls — phone calls disguised as polls, but aimed at influencing voters — to dissuade voters from supporting Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch.
According to ThinkProgress, multiple individuals in the state have reported receiving phone calls from the shady conservative group “SSI Polling,” which claims to be polling on the race between Colbert Busch and Mark Sanford, but does not mention Sanford at all in the calls.
According to ThinkProgress, some of the questions were:
– “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you she had had an abortion?”
– “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you a judge held her in contempt of court at her divorce proceedings?
– “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if she had done jail time?”
– “What would you think of Elizabeth Colbert Busch if I told you she was caught running up a charge account bill?”
“If there’s push polling going on it isn’t coming from us,” a Sanford spokesman told FITS News.
