Whit Ayres’s comments on NH’s regulations of survey research, featured in the Union Leader‘s Granite Status column by John DiStaso:
PUSHING ON THE PUSH POLL LAW. A top national pollster says stepped-up enforcement by the New Hampshire Attorney General of the state law governing political push-polling is hindering pollsters’ ability to do legitimate market research and “persuasion” calls in the state.
The law, coupled with the way the attorney general’s office has been enforcing it for the past two years, has become so onerous that it could hurt the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary in the future, said Whit Ayers, president of North Star Opinion Research and chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants.
“By continuing to harass professional public opinion research firms who work for political candidates, the attorney general’s office is handing ammunition to those who would like to supplant New Hampshire’s primary as first-in-the-nation,” Ayers told the Granite Status this week.
“It really makes it appear that New Hampshire does not want campaigns to be run in the state,” he said. “We don’t face this kind of harassment anywhere else in the country.”
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