Posted on 11/08/2004 2:51:36 PM PST by ambrose
Released: November 08, 2004
Mea Culpa: I am a Pollster, Not a Predictor
By John Zogby
Okay, I got it wrong. And I got it right. Last May, I did indeed say that John Kerry would win and, if he didnt, it would be his fault.
Please understand that I wasnt saying this as a partisan but as a historian of elections. I did not have a horse in this race. For those of you so kind to point out that my brother is on the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee, you need to understand that he was an active Democrat when my polling showed George Pataki defeating Mario Cuomo in 1994, when I had Bob Dole doing much better than other polls suggested against Bill Clinton in 1996, and when I polled for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 1998. It seems I spent lots of my time back then denying I was a Republican.
And to those who note my Arab heritage and again my relationship with my brother, please read the Democratic National Committee position on the Middle East. It offered me no comfort.
I had no horse in this race.
But I did teach American history and political science for 24 years. And I have been polling for a total of 20 years and there are some analytical tools that I (and many others) use to determine election outcomes. That is what I used as the basis of my May column in the St. Louis Business Journal and my September column in the Financial Times. I did feel then (as I do now) that the race was John Kerrys to lose.
First, President George W. Bush was not posting solid re-elect numbers. Indeed, the last three Presidents who ran for re-election with numbers as low as his Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992 all lost. Surprising to me, and rather significantly, President Bush was just re-elected with a majority of the vote by an electorate that still gave him a negative job performance rating and felt the country was headed in the wrong direction.
Second, John Kerry led the President on his ability to handle most issues the economy, education, health care and the war in Iraq. But the President triumphed on his handling of the war on terrorism, on moral values, and on leadership.
As it turns out, the exit polls suggest that more voters listed moral values as their most important issue even though it barely registered in our pre-election poll or, for that matter, in our post-election surveys, either.
It is not that we completely missed the issue. I have related many times in both columns and public speeches that 2004 was the Armageddon Election i.e. that the nation was split between two warring cultures, ideologies, and even demographics. The election was nasty and the two Americas were angry. And, as it turns out, the election was very close.
Why did Kerry lose? I think several factors explain it. First, he wasted too much time talking about his military background and trying to persuade the 48% of the voters who would never vote for him that he could handle the war on terror. In this regard, he wasted his own convention, where he should have rallied his own base, and set himself up for the negative campaigning that would raise all of the important questions about his past, his judgment, and his persona.
Second, he didnt say anything to his base. Principally, Kerrys core constituency was against the war in Iraq. While the Senator changed his focus to more criticism of the war, the fact was that he supported the President, opposed funding for the troops, and never offered an alternative scenario. He tried to be all over the place and ended up no place at all.
Lastly, Kerry just didnt connect with voters. This isnt just the obvious criticism about his personality. It is metaphoric of the entire Democratic Party which simply doesnt understand the religiosity of most Americans, the needs of the heartland that go well beyond bread and butter. How else to explain the many voters who told us that they have been left behind by the economy and still voted for the incumbent?
In short, I also missed the boat and I feel I must explain what happened. Whenever I rely only on history to make a call, I lose. That happened to me in both the 1998 and 2000 New York Senate races. My telephone polling was actually accurate both for Reuters nationally and in the 10 battleground states. My interactive polling for Wall Street Journal Online got 13 of 16 states right (one was tied). Because I have polled so successfully in presidential races in the past, I felt compelled to poll as late as I could and thought I saw a late-breaking trend for Kerry. Such a trend fueled by a surge of young voters that was reported to us in our many calls to battleground cities on election day did not materialize.
My polling was right. My ability to predict was wrong. For those of you who have supported my work over the years, I apologize. I will do better next time: I will just poll not predict.
(11/8/2004)
It's interesting that Zogby thinks he needs to come out with this mea culpa. If it was just an honest mistake, he wouldn't need to explain it. Nope, he knows he screwed up, took sides, and distorted results, and this is why he's trying to explain himself now.
Not working.
The next few elections, people will laugh when they see a Zogby poll and say, "Oh yeah, this is the guy that said 2004 was Kerry's to lose! Bwahahahahaha!!!!"
How did Harris fit into that mix?
Screw you and the camel you rode in on.
The guy is so full of it. He had a horse, and hoped he could INFLUENCE that ridiculous category of the Undecided. The fact is, Bush never trailed in the majority of polls throughout the race, though there were some swings within the MOE. Hopefully he has lost any credibility he may have had, Arab and Dum ties aside.
You're a democrat hack who will never be believed again.
"... polls suggest that more voters listed moral values as their most important issue even though it barely registered in our pre-election poll or, for that matter, in our post-election surveys, either."
Moral values didn't rank highly prior to these exit polls because they weren't the most important issue, John. These flawed polls tell us absolutely nothing.
Krauthammer is on Fox talking about this topic...well, it's over now, but he was talking about it. This evangelical spin is , as Krauthammer put it, like the "angry white male" of the Gingrich revolution.
This election was won on national security. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Zogby is no longer, in my opinion, a "professional" pollster. On the afternoon of election day he was predicting a Kerry win. A few days later on Mike Gallagher's radio show, Zogby became indignant when Mike challenged him about this. Zogby admitted that his data did not show a Kerry win, but that he went ahead and called it for Kerry anyway. He basically insulted Gallagher and ended the segment early.
I don't know how to say blow me, but I know that a phrase that sounds like "boost easy" is a really really bad thing to say to someone in Arabic.
You know what they say--them that can't do, teach.
Which Zogby was it who made a BIG contribution to Kerry?
I'll ask again. Which Zogby was it who made a BIG contribution to Kerry?
The only excuse he left out was, "the dog ate my homework".
LOL. Great minds think alike. This is a non-apology apology, a complete avoidance.
I hope his paying clientele on the right is dropping.
Zogby is like CBS.... Insignificant, and irrelevent.
He is a partisan liberal arab hack and I hope he's washed up as a pollster.
Of course the libs love him, since he tired to get republicans to stay home by stating the race was Kerry's and he would win, before the polls closed.
IMHO, he knew the bloggers and others would report his biased liberal hack job call, and tried to get us to stay home like the networks did in 2000 in Florida.
This is the dems MO folks.
Call it early so folks stay home.
They couldn't get the networks to do it this year, so they found someone who would... His NAME = JOHN ZOGBY.
Way to go zogby, you're in ggod company now, those that are now insignificant.
Maybe you should go back to the mideast, you partisan hack.
You just don't matter. Don't do a mea culpa. Just Go Away.
Regards,
Sonar5
Well, next time nobody will listen to you. I predict you're career as a pollster is over.
First "poll" and show that your favorite RAT is leading. Then you "exit poll" showing that you RAT is leading. Then you rig elections and voila - they were dead on!
Exept, this time vote rigging was countered by Conservative lawyers also and people checking sticky fingers at the polling places.
Everything was so nicely rigged, just as in the past when they got away with it. This time FReakin' FReepers blew the whistle on RATs and watched their sticky crooked fingers. Bring it on!
plus all decent Americans get pi$$ed and took time to vote the RATs out!
everybody send me $50 i'll give you 2 football Locks for this weekend if they don't win it's their(the teams fault) fault---geez this guy is a hustler
TOO late and way TOO insincere for me
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