Yep. Just a few scant weeks ago Zogbys headline was "Election Kerry's to Lose"
DIFFERENT ZOGBY. John is the pollster.
Kerry's Election to loseBut it was pollster John Zogby who gave the most intriguing briefing. Zogby has to be taken seriously because he got it right when almost all the pollsters had it wrong in 2000. He also caught the slight tilt toward the Republicans on the eve of the 2002 elections.
What he told the group upset most of them -- but his message came through loud and clear. While most pollsters view this election as Bush's to lose, he believes this election is Kerry's to lose.
He said that usually at this time of year, 20-25% of the electorate is undecided, but this year there only 5% of the electorate is undecided. Finding such people when polling is becoming exceedingly difficult, he told us. Moreover, the soft vote, that is the people who MIGHT be persuaded to vote for the other guy, is only 10% -- a historic low.
James and John are brothers, John is the pollster.
I saw a "non-political", "technical" interview of John on C-Span a year or so ago and I was startled to hear John make and amazing admission...polling is getting to be so unreliable as to almost be useless.
Reasons he cited were, Caller ID (people don't answer the calls), new phone systems (such as cable phone where you can have any area code you choose), Cell phones as the only phone (once again different area codes and no answers due to the "minutes" issue) and people just refusing to participate (folks used to be thrilled to do it), amoung others.
Bottom line is the pollsters can't be sure that they have a statistically valid sample.
My personal addition is in a Presidential election a national poll is meaningless...President Reagan won 50.3% of the vote but won 45 states in his first election (that's 90% of the states). I forget what the electoral vote was but it seems that President Reagan got about 80% of those. I'm not a bit worried, I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry won as few as 3 states; CA, MA and NY...W lost those three in 2000 and Kerry might carry the popular vote.