Well, it sounds to me Obama is not as confident as the MSM and his campaign tries to project. He definitely wants to benefit from Edwards' negative attack against clinton.

Take a look at the recent Rasmussen poll...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/election_2008__1/daily_p residential_tracking_polling_history

You'll notice Edwards is actually not tanking, and Obama is also not 'surging' as many pundits seem to suggest.

Just worth watching.

Hillary Clinton tops The Trucker poll for Democratic nominee

The Trucker News Services

11/12/2007

Hillary Clinton is the choice of truckers who vote in the recent poll on www.thetrucker.com.

Asked the question "Who would you nominate for the 2008 presidential Democratic candidate?" 40.42 percent of the respondents list Ms. Clinton.

John Edwards received 36.25 percent and Barack Obama received 23.33 percent.

Clinton, Edwards and Obama were listed as choices because they are considered the most viable Democratic candidates according to national polls.

An opportunity to express your choice of Republication candidates will be the poll next week.

www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/2007/11/ 12/HillaryClintontopsTheTruckerpollforDe mocraticnominee.aspx

Obviously Obama is not the choice of working class democrats. To the contrary of many pundits/bloggers, I think Clinton will benefit in IA if Edwards slips to Gephardt territory. Edwards and Clinton have been sharing a very similar voting poll in rural Iowa.

DesMoinesDem,

Did the # on your callerid sport a 646 exchange?

To be honest with you guys, I'm no longer riled up by Edwards' hot rhetoric. I actually have a little bit sympathy for him after the brutal treatment Hillary has endured for the past few days. Both Hillary and Edwards are not liked by MSM, Edwards is absolutely hated by MSM.

Both are fighters though. Obama is an empty suit, through and through, propped up by MSM.

Working class democrats will finish Obama's chance in Iowa.

That's interesting.  There's kind of a fine line between message testing and push polling, I guess.

There's a Central Research Services that does political surveying:

Main number: 212-260-0070

60 Irving Pl 7th Fl
NY, NY

When they do their calling, callerid shows:

646-453-1349  (no answer if you call back)
212-529-5461  (no answer if you call back)
or Unknown

BTW, I think the cancer angle sucks.

runs it. If it's Obama, he should be careful of those lines that he crosses. I would hope that he knows better than to sanction that. That is unacceptable.

And I read this post on the Edwards blogs to be pushed.

and know for fact it is not Obama.

Push Polling does not work.

Check out these links on "Central Marketing" and "Central Research."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/nyregi on/30poll.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/00 1703.php

http://www.kokomotribune.com/archivesear ch/local_story_114230917.html

Neat.

poll testing the issues at the Iowa JJ dinner...

has spent 1-2 times as much on Polling himself t6thn the Clinton campaign has.

Obama -the pureeeeee one!

like 2.4 times or somethin'

like 2.4 times or somethin'

like 2.4 times or somethin'

Let's call on all the campaigns to pledge to never use push polling. It's dishonest and sleazy. It invades privacy.

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view .php?id=26550

You are famous!! Congrats!

This could easily be something done by Edwards campaign, trying to flesh out weaknesses in Clinton and in their campaign.  

They got you highlighted at ABC News blog.

I don't know if I agree with that logic... saying that its obvious they would have asked questions about Obama as well.  The fact the asked about Hillary is obvious... she is the front runner and leading, albeit by a razor thin margin, in the RCP averages for Iowa.  Edwards was your top choice.  I could easily see it being the second tier campaigns as the payers of this message polling (as well as Obama, as he also benefits.)

You're not the only one.  http://www.democraticunderground.com/dis cuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum= 389&topic_id=2276505&mesg_id=227 6505

It's apparently a Republican firm:

http://www.kokomotribune.com/archivesear ch/local_story_114230917.html

Hamilton has been trying unsuccessfully to find a link between Wilson and the firm making the alleged push poll. Some of those who received the calls in question said the callers identified themselves as being from "Central Research Services" or "Central Marketing."

and

When told the telephone caller identification went back to Central Marketing, Wilson called Central "a sister company" of Wilson Research.

If you do a google search for Wilson Research Services, you get a link that comes with this discription:

Opinion research firm serving Republican candidates, conservative organizations, public affairs campaigns, and major corporations.

It ain't Obama.  It's someone on the Republican side, possibly the RNC.

The Republicans are not wasting money testing negative messages about John Edwards. They could care less about John Edwards.

I just now heard on Morning Joe, that it was traced back to a company who's pollster is John Edwards.

This is getting very interesting.

so now its a clinton/obama conspiracy

Someone claiming to be Elizabeth Edwards has responded on Politico -

For what it is worth, and you can be the judge of that, I get asked on the campaign trail whether John will be able to continue a campaign all the way to November. "Of course," I answer, to which the response is invariably that the questioner was told by supporters of another candidate that John would have to drop out. If I had heard it just once, it would not concern me, but it wasn't once and it wasn't in just one state. So I am suspicious that this is a concerted (and false) personal attack of the worst sort. First, I am doing well and there is no prognosis that would suggest any need for John or for me to stop campaigning because of my condition. Second, the notion suggested by the comments above that there is no negative campaigning going on by other campaigns on this issue is nonsense. On the rumor-spreading, I have some idea from where the false rumors have started. I am assuming that the push poll described above [about the haircut story] came from the same camp. What strikes me as incongruous is the notion that John's bold ideas are described by the MSM as desperate (we do desperately need change, so maybe that's what they mean?) and these reprehensible tactics are not described the same way.

For what it's worth, the supposed company behind this also does polling for The Hill (the publication, not Clinton).

But to get off the track of making unfounded accusation of the various candidates, has there been any blowback to Edwards bringing up the Elizabeth cancer issue in his JJ speech?  I thought he was going pretty well until he brought that into it.  I don't believe that is a reason not to vote for him, but equally it is not a reason to vote for him and I don't think it transforms his politics.  Just wondering if there was any response pro or con to his inclusion of it in his speech.

Just spoke to Carol (assumedly McMahon) at Central Research.

She vehemently denies that her firm is involved with these calls -- although she does acknowledge that the numbers identified as "caller ID" elsewhere in the comments are hers.

She said her firm is making calls to Iowa farmers.... but they have nothing to do with politics (IIRC, she sai they were about organic farming)

can anyone confirm that caller ID on these calls is in fact coming from the two numbers associated with her firm? (646-453-1349 and 212-529-5461 )

I really cannot imagine the Obama campaign would do something like that. The nasty questions are about Edwards, and the negatives mentioned about Clinton are negatives almost every Democratic caucus-goer already thinks of. Obama is running against Clinton, not Edwards. Why would Obama risk ruining his image to trash Edwards, who is almost an ally, and then go so easy on Clinton?

I am sure the Clinton campaign is shook up about the Jefferson Jackson dinner last Saturday, where the Obama team put on a very forceful show, and both Edwards and Obama gave much better speeches. Karl Rove, I mean Mark Penn, canceled a speaking engagement this week to fly into Iowa. Coincidence?

I think it more likely that the Clinton campaign is hitting back on Edwards for his attacks against Hillary, and this is Mark Penn's revenge. Asking some mildly negative questions about Hillary would be just a diversion to throw people off the scent. And how better to throw off the scent than to implicate Obama?

Chase Martyn is on Taylor Marsh's show right now. He thinks this negative message testing is from Edwards camp itself to see if his supporters are wavering. Most likely scenario since all the people getting calls are well known hardcore Edwards supporters. He does not think it is put by rival campaigns because they would not test it only on hardcore Edwards supporters.

I'm actually one of the people calling for those polls!  It's funny to see everyone talking about something that I've worked on since none of the political campaigns I've dialed in the past have ever made much of a stir.

Most of the questions asked during the "poll" were reflected accurately, however there are a few corrections that should be made.  First, I'd like to note that Clinton, Obama and Edwards are all targets of the "most concerns you..." questions.  The questions for Edwards have changed a couple of times.  It started out asking about Elizabeth, then they changed it to him being a trial lawyer being a concern.  

The questions for Hillary are: What most concerns you about Hillary Clinton?  If you had to pick one, would it be 1.) that she is insincere and changes her mind too often? 2.) that she would be a weak general election candidate? Or 3.) That she would not bring real change to Washington, D.C.?

For Barack Obama, it is whether the person is concerned that he "lacks the experience necessary to be president" or "would be a weak general election candidate"?

Anyhow, any other questions, feel free to e-mail me or stop by my blog (http://nukethelibs.blogspot.com).  Oh... it is Central Research that paid for the polls, even though we were recently instructed that we are not allowed to divulge that information.

This week on the Chris Matthews Show Howard Fineman said the following:

"Mr. FINEMAN: There's a lot of trash talking going on in the phone banks in Iowa. Everybody's trying to be nice in public, but on the phone it's a little different. Somebody's going to get caught. I don't know which campaign is going to get caught, but whichever campaign on the Democratic side does get caught, it's going to be a huge story out there."

http://www.electiongeek.com/blog/2007/11 16/two-cases-of-push-polling-one-hint

Which leads me to believe we might be looking at a Democrat behind the polling.