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Calling someone to gather information about how they feel about an issue or a candidate is one thing.
That's polling.
But calling someone to "push" an agenda, or to make an effort to shape the opinion of the person who picked up the phone - that's a whole other story.
That's known as "push polling" - and public relations and polling strategists say that it isn't really polling.
There's a lot of confusion regarding push polls, according to James Delorey, senior vice president of research at Global Strategy Group.
"We do not do push polls," he said. "And our clients do not do push polls. The whole idea of a push poll is to persuade a person to take some sort of action. By no means do we do that.
"A phone caller with an agenda to shape opinion is not conducting research."
Delorey said "push polling" is a tactic, but...