Did Zogby try to influence the Super Tuesday election with erroneous polling?

[billbuckhead]

[Dogmudgeon]

1. His brother is an Obama superdelegate

If Hillary can be blamed for Blackwater due to tenuous connections, then Obama should shoulder the same kind of blame.

--p!

[Donnachaidh]

2. Zogby ALWAYS tries to influence the voting

Please!

WHY would he be touring the *hip* shows like The Daily Show? We're just developing a new version of mindspeak - a BLUE version.

[robcon]

3. His explanation is so lame, it's hard to believe he's still in the polling business.

Zogby: "About California: Some of you may have noticed our pre-election polling differed from the actual results. It appears that we underestimated Hispanic turnout and overestimated the importance of younger Hispanic voters. We also overestimated turnout among African-American voters. Those of you who have been following our work know that we have gotten 13 out of 17 races right this year, and so many others over the years. This does happen."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/after-super-tuesday_b_85369.html

THIS DOES HAPPEN!!!!! That's his explanation! He had Obama up by 13 points in California, while Clinton won by 10 points. 23 points off (1/4) cannot, IMO, be the result just of Hispanic underestimate, and African-Americans overestimate.

Zogby should get out of the business.

[WinkyDink]

5. "...we have gotten 13 out of 17 races right...." Translation: "We failed 23% of the time. Get over

it!"

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. He's A Liar

Hillary carried young Hispanics 67% -32%...That could in no way negatively affected her numbers:



http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#CADEM

[jasmine621]

4. He probably influenced contributions to Obama more than elections. nt

[robcon]

6. To be clear, I think Zogby is a fraud.

He manipulates the numbers to get the outcome he wants. And then gets it posted on Drudge.

[Mass]

7. All Zogby polling have been crap for YEARS - How he stays in business is what bothers me!

[bigwillq]

8. No

I voted for who I thought was the best candidate. Polls never influence me.

[moondust]

10. You mean by trying to get Obama voters to stay home?

"Polls say Obama's gonna win anyway. No need for me to go vote."

[robcon]

12. NO. Trying to generate more money/publicity about his phantom "rise" in the polls.

Zogby is a fraud.

[IsItJustMe]

11. This incorrect margin is a huge and unforgivable discrepancy. I will no longer trust Zogby polls.

One can only ponder if he had dishonest motives in this, but there is one hell of a correlation.

[Occam Bandage]

13. By setting unrealistically high expectations for Obama, helping Hillary spin her losses positive?

[jlake]

14. Hell Yes. Zogby is a RW shill who should be shunned.

[robcon]

15. He's not a right wing shill. He over estimated Kerry in '04, too.

The problem, IMO, with Zogby is that he is willing to manipulate the raw data to obtain the outcome he wants. That is the only explanation I can obtain for his being so far different from every other poll in California (just as he was incredibly distant from every other poll in NH last month, and for Kerry in '04) and he's always in the direction he wants the poll to show.

But he's very successful in getting his numbers for NH, and then for CA, onto Drudge for a headline.

[jlake]

18. Ha! He's on Rush and Hannity all the time yucking it up.

You don't think him (perhaps purposely) inflating Kerry's numbers may have been a tactic to get more RWers to come out and make Democrats sit home 'cuz they knew they'd win?

[Renew Deal]

16. No, he screwed up.

It was bad math.

[bidenista]

17. not the first time, either. nt

[Renew Deal]

20. It's predictive polling

Have you ever tried to guess the winner to every football game? There will be upsets and fuck ups.

[NoBorders]

19. No, and I think his polling hurt Obama if anyone

Think about it.

If you inflate Obama's numbers the side effects would be to lower OBama's turnout, and give Clinton the 'surprise victory' PR.

If he's trying to help Obama, he's screwing gup.

[robcon]

21. It's hard to believe that's a genuine opinion, NoBorders.

Obama enthusiasm, and especially money, has been created mostly by his meteoric "rise" in the polls. I think you are being coy.

[NoBorders]

23. Nope.

For one thing, most polls showed an increase in support for Obama over the past few weeks, especially post-iowa. Zogby was an outlier in showing that much support for Obama, but generally the polls increased for Obama accross the board.

Secondly, my personal feelings when I saw the Zogby poll was that a)it was incorrect and, b) it wouldn't help obama, because there was NO way he would win by that much (esp CA), if he won at all. My reaction was that it set expectations too high for him, and made the media narrative of his loss more seem like more of a let-down or a disappointment.

That's how I honestly saw it.

[CyberPieHole]

22. According to Zogby Obama was up 13 points against Clinton in California...

that's a 23 point mistake. Zogby is a fraud...he must have been polling ONLY Obama campaign workers.

[billbuckhead]

25. The real reason Zogby was 23 points off.................

Drank way too much Kool-aid. :spray:

[HughMoran]

24. Fucking weasel did the same thing in 2004. This guy should be IGNORED!

Didn't he predict a Kerry win on 2004? I hate this idiot.

[Rhythm]

26. Polling has changed in the last 10 yrs, and Zogby's techniques haven't kept up

I actually worked both in Zogby's front office, and in the call center in Utica NY in 1999, and know firsthand how things worked BACK THEN, when Zogby was revered as perhaps the most accurate in the industry.

BUT NOW?! With so many people unreachable by landline phones (and pollsters can't call cells), and it being impossible to verify if the people signing up for the online interactive polls are giving true demographic data, i don't see how he comes up with remotely accurate data anymore.

I don't believe at all that he would purposefully create/release fraudulent data as a means of influence; in my experiences working with him, i found him to be a man of great personal integrity. I just think that people's lives have changed too drastically in the last decade, and his company hasn't kept up.

It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight... he's armed, but not sufficiently to do the job.

[Sir Jeffrey]

27. Can't he just suck at his job without some ulterior motive?

[busymom]

28. Imagine the outrage if Zogby had been supporting Hillary with his polls.

and the results had then been that Hillary didn't do as well as expected from the polls. There would be screams of "Hillary is cheating. Hillary lied".

[juajen]

29. If he's licensed, it should be taken away.

I will ignore all of his polls anyway.

[maryallen]

30. Certainly there are more than two possibilities?

The list of options is too narrow.

For example, fraud is a possibility.

[robcon]

31. It's fraud, IMO

The reason I think it is fraud (intentional misrepresentation of the data) is that Zogby's numbers are so far away from every other poll - and always in the same direction...

Pollster Dates Clinton Obama
ARG 2/3-4/08 49 45
SurveyUSA* 2/3-4/08 52 42
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby 2/2-4/08 36 49
SurveyUSA 2/2-3/08 53 41
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby* 2/1-3/08 40 46
Rasmussen 2/2/2008 44 45
ARG 2/1-2/08 47 39
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby* 1/30-2/2/08 41 45
Suffolk 2/1/2008 39 40
http://www.pollster.com/08-CA-Dem-Pres-Primary.php