The Republicans are calling it "negative push polling." Democrats say it's "persuasive voter identity polling" and GOP candidates have done it before in Utah.

Either way, it is the use of the latest in telephone marketing techniques to identify voters — those who are already with your candidate, those who could be persuaded to vote for your candidate, and those who have "made up their minds and who you don't want to waste money on calling again" — as Utah Democratic Party executive director Todd Taylor puts it.

Democrats are making the calls into several Utah House and Senate districts where they believe they have a chance of winning this year. Several thousand Sandy residents are reportedly getting calls from both sides of a close race between House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, and his Democratic challenger, Jay Seegmiller.

Curtis beat Seegmiller by just 20 votes in 2006, and Democrats and Republicans are clearly targeting the House District 49 contest this year.

Democrats "are negative push polling against me," said Curtis on Tuesday.

Taylor says Democrats are not engaged in push polling — a process where thousands and thousands of residents are called and hear unpleasant, and sometimes untrue, comments about political opponents.

But Democrats are conducting an "admittedly slanted" voter identification poll in a number of legislative districts, said Taylor. "And anyway, Curtis or his supporters are doing the same thing," charged Taylor, a charge denied by Chris Bleak, House chief of staff and Curtis' top political aide, and Salt Lake County GOP chairman James Evans.

"We haven't heard about any push polling by Republicans, and the speaker would be furious if it was being done in his district without his knowledge," said Bleak. Evans said: "Republicans are not doing any push polling. Why would we? We're ahead. You push poll when you're behind. Where is the evidence" that Republicans are push polling? "Give us some names who have been called. The Democrats are just trying to cover themselves because so many people are angry over this."

"We aren't doing anything we haven't done before" in previous election years, and that GOP officeholders haven't done before, either, said Taylor. "And it is not negative push polling."

Besides how one defines such polling, the technology has progressed so far and fast that "persuasive voter identification polling" may be here to stay.

Taylor says his party is conducting such polling "all over the state." Bleak says he's heard that it is targeted to several south Salt Lake County state House and Senate districts — places both parties see as legislative battlegrounds.