About an hour ago, roughly 5pm today May 31, 2023, I received a call for what was described as a political "survey" directed toward the Kentucky general election this year. After the first qualifying questions such as "Are you registered to vote in KY?" and "Are you registered as a Democrat or a Republican?", I quickly realized that this particular "survey" was not an ethical, unbiased, empirical survey but was using numerous inflammatory statements which were being posed as questions but actually being only followed by the question "Does this make you more or less likely to vote for Andy Beshear?" All those negative prefatory statements were intended to create negative opinions of Andy Beshear and many of them were outright lies. I absolutely hate this kind of fake campaigning which is disguised as a survey since the typical poorly educated respondent is not very often skilled enough to understand that they are totally biased and goal directed instead of being intended to elicit and document accurate responses in order to compile legitimate statistical data without the survey administrator having done anything to create bias either intentionally or accidentally. They are not statistical instruments. They are campaign tools. I immediately began to respond to all these inflammatory "questions" with the response that "This is a biased survey intended to create negative opinions of Governor Beshear by using outright lies about him and are doubtless being paid for by some Right Wing Radical Repugnican organization." To the callers credit, she managed to get through the "survey" and at the end I left her somewhat unable to respond by saying "Now, if you consider yourself to be a decent human being, go out and get yourself an honest job." She literally didn't know what to say.
These kinds of fake "surveys" are frequently used by candidates who know they are significantly behind in whatever actual legitimate polling they have access to and are far more often used by Right Wing Radical Repugnican candidates than by Democrats. They are one of the worst aspects of modern election campaigning and are never used by honest, ethical candidates or political consulting companies. They are based on lies. They are intended to change the voters' opinions, not to gain knowledge of the voters' opinions. They have absolutely no merit or value in a truly democratic election since their objective is to change an election from being democratic and honest to one that is undemocratic and dishonest. They are not used by candidates who want to win on their own virtues. In fact, they are generally used by candidates who have little or no political virtues and that is definitely the case in this election. This poll was being used in support of Daniel Cameron who has supported a great deal of legislation intended to destroy individual constitutional rights in Kentucky. They are truly the mark of an unqualified, unethical, and unworthy candidate at a time when Kentucky has the best governor in America, Andy Beshear, and that governor is holding a roughly 60% approval rating across all voter blocks. Every voter in Kentucky should do the same thing I did if they receive one of these "survey" calls and confront the "survey" and the caller by calling them exactly what they are, dishonest and based on lies.
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