Zogby applies "special sauce" in S.D. Sen. Race [He admits it!]

Rapid City Journal ^ | 10/30/04 | Bill Harlan

[Salvation]

Seemingly titlted!

[stockpirate]

Zogby was one of two pollers that was close in the 2000 election. Once does not make for a record. IMHO

[OldFriend]

Zogby is the handmaiden of the left.

[cookcounty]

"Zogby adjusts according to his mood"

No, he selects a few races (not too many, that would spoil the sauce!) to manipulate. In a small population state like SD, he needs to panic Dems into opening their wallets for Daschle, and that's what he's up to.

[MEG33]

Good thinking!

[reformedliberal]

Recorded smears BY GOPers?

Here in Western WI, the automated smears are all D.

[coffeebreak]

Zogby is normally right on in Presidential years. Don't discount his numbers. 2000 - Gore 48, Bush 46, Nader 5

Does that look right to you?

Zogby was the only polster to say that Gore would win the popular vote in 2000; he did. All the others had Bush ahead by 3-5 points. In 1996 Zogby was only off by one tenth of a point in the Dole/Clinton race. Today he has Kerry up by one.

[truecons]

Zogby Research Indicates Earth Is Flat

 

Shocking the scientific community, at a press conference today political pollster John Zogby presented data he says conclusively shows that the earth is, indeed, flat.

 

"We've known this all along", said Zogby, under fire recently for his questionable polling procedures that some say "cook the books" to produce desired results. "I mean, for crying out loud, look around!"

 

When pressed for details, Zogby presented a chart with numbers on it, leading journalists present to look at each other, give that "I didn't know that but it makes sense" look, and nod approvingly.

 

Zogby then went on to describe their methodology, which involved two rocks and a long string. "We stretched the string between two towers a mile apart and let about 100 feet dangle down. Then we tied a rock to each end of the string. We measured the angles between the horizontal and vertical parts of the string and got 7.16x10-3 degrees from 90, which would indicate that the earth was a circle with a radius of approximately 4000 miles."

 

"Well, we immediately know that was wrong. I mean, that's such a small angle we figured we must have measured wrong. So we corrected based on the exit polling we did during the 2000 election in South Dakota which was 49% Republican and 33% Democrat. We took that ratio, which is 1.48, adjusted it with a correction factor code named "Special Sauce", and came up with exactly 7.16x10-3! Subtracted from our original value, it showed an exact 90 degree angle, consistent with our previous certainty that the earth is, indeed, flat."

 

"I assure you, after about an hour of mutual back-patting, we went out and had one honkin' pizza party...sausage, canadian bacon...the works!"

 

When asked to explain how they even began to pursue this line of research, Zogby gave a surprising answer. "It all began back in 2000 when we were doing our exit polling. We met a wonderful young man who was with the office of Senator Tom Daschle. We got talking over a few beers, and one of our researchers let it slip that he wasn't all that sure about this round earth thing. Then this young man, I think his name was Pfeiffer...you know, like Michelle...wwwrrrooowwww!...he said something that I think will end up changing our view of the world forever. He says, 'You know...no sane person in America believes the Earth is round'."

 

"And the rest is history. Oh, and by the way, our 2000 polling data also proves that Nebraska is actually slightly concave...go figure".

 

 

John Zogby,
demonstrating how his proctologist
found that "correction factor"

[Hermann the Cherusker]

No, most pollsters had the race even, or +/-1-2 either way.

Harris called it right with a 48-48 tie. Zogby was off by 2 in favor of the man who lost.

[Cableguy]

Zogby admits to fudging his numbers!

[ClintonBeGone]

Does that look right to you?

And what percent of the vote did Gore get?

[Dales]

The adjusting the numbers does not bother me nearly as much as what triggered him to adjust the numbers.

1) Pressure from the left, and

2) Seeing the numbers showing Diedrich up by 4... in a poll with a 3.5 MoE... when he had lost previously to Herseth by just 1%. He said it gave him great pause. Diedrich up 4 is within the MoE of the final result.

I did not think my estimation of Zogby could get lower. It just did.

[Cableguy]

Probably the same thing happened in CO, but in the opposite direction. Every
poll has Bush up except for Zogby. The latest local poll had Bush up by 9
yesterday. Zogby finally showed a 1 point Bush lead yesterday also. You also
need to take in account that Kerry withdrew all his ads, and cancelled a
pre-planned visit. So everyone agrees (even Kerry) that Bush has a
commanding lead in CO except Zogby.

Similar thing happened in 2000, when Zogby abruptly showed a Gore lead after
the DUI charge surfaced. I can only guess that he played around with his
party ID ratio to reflect what he thought was going to happen, not what his
results actually showed.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

What percent did Bush get? Not 46%.

[ClintonBeGone]

Thank you.