Did the Republican Jewish Coalition conduct a recent poll in which the organization had no real intention of collecting data — but merely wanted to push along negative messages about Barack Obama?
The RJC’s executive director, Matthew Brooks, has been fending off claims that his organization conducted such a “push poll” after several Jewish residents in swing states said they had received negative and misleading calls about Obama.
Democrats, however, now concede that the RJC did not conduct a push poll, though they continue to insist that the messages the organization was testing were filled with distortions and untruths. They have called on Brooks to release the full list of questions.
Brooks says the RJC did nothing wrong by sponsoring a poll that tested negative messages about Obama and will not provide the survey questions to the media unless Democrats do the same with their own polls. The National Jewish Democratic Council declined to do so.
“I’ll be happy to release the questions when the Obama people release their polls,” Brooks said. “I don’t want a double standard.”
The RJC leader said his organization had “nothing to apologize for” and was simply testing messages like “every single campaign” does. Many of the messages that Brooks confirmed were tested in the poll are statements that have been appearing in RJC advertisements and other literature for months.
Brooks added that characterizations of the survey as a “negative Obama poll” were unfair.
He said of the 82 questions asked, “less than 10 percent” tested “messages” dealing with Obama. Other questions dealt with the economy, energy independence and a “wide range of issues.”
The poll queried 750 Jewish voters in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
While clearing the RJC of the push poll claim, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said it appears the organization was testing messages that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
“There’s a line between basically accurate and basically deceptive,” Mellman said, “and they crossed that line.”
Brooks denied “absolutely” and “categorically” that the poll asked any questions that described Obama as a Muslim or brought up the Islamic background of his family. He also denied the claims, made by some who said they were called, that there were any questions claiming that Obama had been endorsed by the president of Iran or donated to the PLO.
The RJC head also disputed similar reports that callers were told that Obama supported a “divided Jerusalem.” He said the actual question was: “Barack Obama once supported a united, undivided Jerusalem, but now says it’s ‘up to the parties,’ which could mean a divided Jerusalem.”
“The questions were designed to understand why the Jewish community continues to have a problem” with Obama, Brooks said. A series of polls have found that Obama currently commands about 60 percent of the Jewish vote, a sizable majority but 15 to 20 percentage points less than the totals recorded by other recent Democratic presidential candidates.