Right-wing polling operation trolling in Colorado - Udall with big lead

Interesting. Marc Ambinder brings to our attention that we may not be done with over-the-top anti-union rhetoric in Colorado in 2008. Ambinder reports,

1. Card check, please. The business lobby is pushing back against labor. Republican pollster John McLaughlin is distributing data that he says shows that labor union support for "card check" elections could hurt Democratic candidates in the fall and help Republican incumbents.

The poll question is phrased thusly,

If an election were held to decide whether workers would organize a union, which one of the following types of elections is the best way to protect the individual rights of workers? Having a process where a union is organized if a majority of workers simply sign a card and the workers’ signatures are made public to their employer, the union organizers and their co-workers. OR, having a federally supervised secret and private ballot election where workers privately vote yes or no on whether to authorize union representation.

Who ordered up this poll?

McLaughlin conducted the survey for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, a corporate group opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, a major priority for labor unions.

Wonky side note: McLaughlin, who worked for Sen. Fred Thompson's presidential campaign, is teaming with ex-Thompson communicatons director Todd Harris on the Coalition's behalf.

Card-check elections do not require a long and drawn out election process. Such a process is beneficial to management as it allows time for them to seed misinformation, to intimidate workers and to fire workers who are involved with the organizing.

A card check does not requires you to stand up and announce your decision. So the "secret ballot" trope is misleading. Workers already are casting their vote in secret. The AFL-CIO offers more on why a move towards more NLRB elections is harmful to workers.

At present though 56% in Colorado favor leaving elections as they are and 30% favor moving away from NLRB elections.

In addition to trolling for support on anti-worker ballot measures they also polled the U.S. Senate race and show Democrat Mark Udall with a commanding 44-32% lead. That's a much larger lead than recent polls have shown and is more bad news for Republican Bob Schaffer. In a state with a decided Republican registration advantage a state-wide GOP candidate should not be facing with a 12 point polling deficit.

You can read the entire poll in MS Word format here.