Mommy, what is a push poll?

" It is a way of slandering a political opponent in the guise of a poll. The so-called pollster calls thousands of people (instead of the normal 600-1000) and asks questions including things like "Did you know that Sen. John McCain has a black child? (used by the Bush campaign in South Carolina in the 2000 primaries). The implication was that McCain had an affair with a black woman. In reality, he and Mrs. McCain adopted a handicapped child from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. So this act of kindness was spun as a way of insinuating that he cheated on his wife, but in such a way that the Bush campaign didn't formally lie and if caught could say, "Oh, we were just curious about racial attitudes." "