Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Raging Ad Wars and Pushing Polls
I thought Social Security would be an interesting and timely blog topic; but had no idea how high the stakes were going to be until seeing this article : Ad wars rage over Social Security Guess I'm just a little lonely voice amidst these big players waging their $50+ Million Ad War. The big players seem to be the same organizations that fought the ad wars in the 2004 election campaign. Lining up against Personal Retirement Choice are MoveOn.org, Campaign for America's Future (CAF), Rock the Vote(RTV), and AARP in a coalition that is raising over $30Million. On the other side, Pro- Choice are Progress for America (PFA), Club for Growth, and USANext (the "anti-AARP" senior citizen organization) ; these groups are hoping to raise $20-$40 Million.
As this war get rolling, AARP seems to be making the first major aggressive moves, claiming credit for $5Million spent and 250,000 letters sent to congress. In what seems a daring move to make black appear white, AARP and RTV have teamed up for poll pushing as described in MTV Poll Masks Youth Views on Social Security . Poll Pushing? Read the article to get a full discussion. Simply put, it means if you don't get the desired answer from a poll respondent, you keep asking slanted questions until you get something that fits your point of view. So, you can start with 65% in favor of "Choice" and then get it down so it seems only 47% favor it - but even so, the anti-choice duo could not torture the statistics into showing more opposed to choice than in favor.
Could it be that people really prefer to have a choice over how their money gets spent, regardless of how the Ad Warriors spend their money ?
As this war get rolling, AARP seems to be making the first major aggressive moves, claiming credit for $5Million spent and 250,000 letters sent to congress. In what seems a daring move to make black appear white, AARP and RTV have teamed up for poll pushing as described in MTV Poll Masks Youth Views on Social Security . Poll Pushing? Read the article to get a full discussion. Simply put, it means if you don't get the desired answer from a poll respondent, you keep asking slanted questions until you get something that fits your point of view. So, you can start with 65% in favor of "Choice" and then get it down so it seems only 47% favor it - but even so, the anti-choice duo could not torture the statistics into showing more opposed to choice than in favor.
Could it be that people really prefer to have a choice over how their money gets spent, regardless of how the Ad Warriors spend their money ?
