Eric Wargotz Lies About Polling Data in Attempt to Mislead Public

Wargotz Campaign Uses Survey without Permission and Misrepresents Data. End Quote

Baltimore, MD (1888PressRelease) July 03, 2010 - The Rutledge for U.S. Senate Campaign was notified that the Wargotz Campaign has taken and misused polling data without permission from The Tarrance Group located in Alexandria, Virginia. The Tarrance Group has issued a statement admonishing the Wargotz campaign for their misleading and unethical behavior. The Tarrance Group has requested that the Wargotz Campaign revise their false and misleading claims or remove them from their website. Jim Rutledge said, "I am shocked and disturbed by this revelation of such underhanded and unethical behavior by Eric Wargotz."

The Tarrance Group released a statement on their website.

"Dr. Eric Wargotz' campaign for U.S. Senate released a poll on Wednesday June 30, 2010 with the headline "Wargotz leads Mikulski by 3% in recent poll." This caused some observers to believe that Dr. Wargotz maintained a 3-point lead statewide, when in fact the poll was only conducted in the 1st Congressional District of Maryland, and even then the campaign cited the ballot in Baltimore County alone. We regret this miscommunication on the part of Wartgotz campaign. We can only conclude that the campaign, which is not a client of The Tarrance Group and falsely transmitted data from another proprietary survey, is attempting to mislead the public.

Although the campaign statement itself explains that the numbers cited were strictly from Baltimore County, we feel that this headline did not make this point clear enough and instead misrepresents our data.

The Tarrance Poll cited was conducted in Maryland's 1st Congressional District and included only those parts of Baltimore County contained within the 1st District, comprising N=41 interviews. The Wargotz campaign, which is not a client of The Tarrance Group, neither coordinated with nor received The Tarrance Group's permission to release the data. If consulted on such an option, we would have advised the campaign to not release the data due to the small cell size and large margin of error associated with it, and for the fact that the entirety of Baltimore County is not represented.

The Tarrance Group has requested that the Wargotz campaign either revise their campaign communications to reflect these realities, or remove them from their website altogether."

The Rutledge for Senate Campaign demands that the Eric Wargotz Campaign immediately remove this information from their website and issue a public apology to the Citizens of Maryland for this lapse in judgment and unethical behavior and demands that Eric Wargotz promptly refund all donations that his campaign receives as a result of the deception it has perpetrated on the public.

For more information about Jim Rutledge and his campaign for U.S. Senate in Maryland, please visit the campaign online.

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