Okay this is weird.The

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Okay, this is weird.

The analysis on today’s ARG poll release concludes thus …

Over the past 2 days of calling, a number of older respondents registered as undeclared voters have reported that they have received telephone calls from a campaign informing them that they will not be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary because they missed the deadline to switch parties. A respondent discovered, however, that when she told the caller that she was thinking about voting for Howard Dean, the caller told her that she would be eligible to vote.

The clear implication of this comment is that someone <$Ad$>from the Dean campaign is making some sort of push-poll trying to depress the turnout of a voting group that leans against Dean (or at least isn’t his strongest), i.e., older voters.

[Late Update: A number of readers have asked about this sentence above, believing I’m implicating Dean. I’m not. I’m saying the clear implication of ARG’s comment points toward Dean. And I think that’s obviously true. That doesn’t mean it’s clear Dean’s behind it. In fact, I suspect it’s as likely as not that those who are behind it aren’t even Democrats. I’m looking into it.]

If true, it’s the slimiest stuff imaginable — the kind of trash tactics Dems are used to seeing from the other side.

But how did ARG get this information about these calls ‘from a campaign’? Did it come up in the course of the polling questions? Or is it scuttlebutt in New Hampshire campaign circles?

Things like this do happen. Sometimes overenthusiastic volunteers just go off the reservation and do stupid things. But it seems odd to hear about it from a polling firm.

I’m not casting doubt on the claim. I don’t know any more about it than this little bit of text I quoted above. But something seems funny about it. It’s quite a charge and it deserves more explanation.

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