The N.C. Association of Educators is not making calls through TDM Research.

Cecil Banks, a spokesman for the group, said that they have made calls about the governor's race in the past month using Washington, D.C.-based pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

He said the calls were not "push polls," in which a poll format is used to float attacks against the opposing candidate. Rather, he said they were for internal use.

To the recipient, it can be hard to distinguish the two. In the latter, a campaign or its supporters are testing various lines of attack to see which are effective.

Over the weekend, a Daily Kos blogger reported receiving a poll from the Fort Worth-based Tyson Organization, operating under the name TDM Research. He wrote that the questions tended to be positive about Beverly Perdue and negative about rival Richard Moore.

Banks said the calls were not done by the NCAE, and Perdue's campaign said they were not aware of them.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the NCAE had used Tyson.