PROVIDENCE -- Less than a week before the Republican primary, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee has become the target of a push poll attacking him for supporting abortion rights.

A push poll is a telephone survey in which questions are designed to weaken support for one candidate or build up support for another. The negative campaign tactic is illegal in some states, but not Rhode Island.

Chafee, who is running for a second full term, faces Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey in Tuesday's Republican primary.

Several voters said yesterday that they received automated telephone calls asking whether they would vote in the primary and which candidate they would choose. Those who chose Chafee heard graphic descriptions of an abortion procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," which the poll said Chafee supports.

Eva Geoppo, 57, of Providence, said she received four phone calls because she has multiple phone lines at home. On the first call she received, she chose Chafee when asked who she planned to vote for.

"It just freaked me out," said Geoppo, who owns a general contracting business. "They said something along the lines of 'Do you realize Senator Chafee is for partial-birth abortions and he's a war monger?' "

The next time, she chose Laffey.

"It was 'Do you need a ride to the polls?' " she said.

Late yesterday, the Chafee campaign called on Laffey to denounce the "dirty-tricks" campaign "being practiced on his behalf" by a shadowy group organized in such a way that voters here are prevented from even "knowing who is funding these attacks."

"While federal law requires outside advocacy groups to disclose who their donors are, this organization has been able to exploit their status to avoid having to disclose their contributors," said Chafee campaign manager Ian Lang.

In response, the Laffey camp said: "We have never heard of this organization, and we have nothing to do with them, but we would say that these kind of tactics have no place in a political campaign and we would discourage any campaign or organization from employing these tactics, including the Chafee campaign."

Geoppo said the call came from a group named Common Sense, which Chafee's campaign identified as Common Sense 2006, an Ohio-based organization that has been running a series of negative TV ads against that state's pro-choice gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Ted Strickland.

Common Sense's telephone line rang busy, and chairman Zeke Swift did not immediately respond to a message left at the number listed for him.

Katherine Gregg, of the Journal State House Bureau, contributed to this report.