Over at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz has a good explanation of the difference between push polling and opinion polling designed to test negative campaign messages. in short, push polling does not use sampling – it’s just phone canvassing disquised as a poll – while more legitimate opinion polls might present a barrage of politically tilted questions, but are actually used to gauge responses to the tilt. A few years ago, I was polled by an outfit out of Utah, asking questions like, “Do you support the repeal of the death tax.” At the time, I assumed it was a push poll because it was clear that they weren’t trying to get a real sense of public opinion, but now it seems like they were interested in what I had to say. I hung up on them, but I suspect they could use that data as well.