The difference between Zogbyism and McCarthyism is that Senator McCarthy was right about there being Communists in American government whereas Zogby was wrong about American voters.
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 didn’t, it would be his fault.
Please understand that I wasn’t 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 Kerry’s 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 didn’t say anything to his base. Principally, Kerry’s 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 didn’t connect with voters. This isn’t just the obvious criticism about his personality. It is metaphoric of the entire Democratic Party which simply doesn’t 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)
Baghdad Zag blew it. On at least ONE of his interactive polls he allowed a WRITE-IN space for the REASON why people felt the country was headed in the WRONG DIRECTION.
B.Z. must have chit-canned those answers because MANY of them would have listed moral-decay, and activist judges. BOTH of which would have pointed to a BUSH voter, not a sKerry voter!
Hmmmm? I always thought polling WAS predicting ..??
"Let's be honest: Zogby's conduct this year bordered on outrageous. No other independent pollster was out making public predictions of a John Kerry or George W. Bush victory months before hand. And no other pollster decided to wait until 5:30pm Eastern time on election day to post their final numbers."
'nuf said.
Slight correction...
BULLZOGBY!!! never again!!
"I polled for the war before I polled against the war"
The difference between Zogbyism and McCarthyism is that Senator McCarthy was right about there being Communists in American government whereas Zogby was wrong about American voters.
BULLSH@T! You are a prevaricating purveyor of partisan propaganda. Piss-off..
He still doesn't get it. I would have answered that the country was going in the wrong direction...abortion, gay marriage, Hollyweird immorality being copied by society...and I voted for the President. Zogby should never get another cent for polling after his huge flop in this election cycle.
Hunter S. Thompson is lousy at making game bets as well. He offers his choices on ESPN's website. Problem is, and he knows it, is that he bets with his heart and not with his head.
His batting record is unchanged after declaring that John Kerry would win.
November 2, 2004
Thompson: D-Day
"The Good Doctor predicts John Kerry will be elected, and will make an excellent President."
Wrong on both counts.
Well, gee, sometimes I've seen you become both, even when you're analyzing your own data.
He never had a horse in this race? How naive does Zogby think we actually are? I remember his "prediction" of over 300 electoral votes for Kerry, as well as his hopeful prediction of a Kerry victory in Virginia the day of the election. I was listening to him on O'Reilly's radio show(I'm ashamed to admit), and I heard the hope in his voice that he saw Kerry strength in VA. Who is he trying to fool with his comments today? Zogby is absolutely finished as a credible pollster.
http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp
run a search on the last name Zogby.
sorry, I must have run out of sauce...
..in other words, it's a good thing the hoildays are coming up so we can pick which toy is going to be the most popular this year.
idiots
Doogle
the media really seems to like this guy. why is he so revered?
ZOGBY, JAMES WASHINGTON,DC 20015 SELF/POLLSTER 6/7/2004 $1,000 McKinney, Cynthia A (Democrat) ZOGBY, JAMES J WASHINGTON,DC 20015 ZOGBY REPORT/POLLESTER 7/23/2004 $1,000 Holden, Tim (Democrat) ZOGBY, JAMES J WASHINGTON,DC 20015 ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE/FOUNDER AND 2/2/2004 $1,000 Kerry, John ZOGBY, JAMES J WASHINGTON,DC 20015 THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE/PRESIDE 9/30/2004 $1,000 Driscoll, Joseph Edward (Democrat) ZOGBY, JAMES J MR WASHINGTON,DC 20015 ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE/FOUNDER AND 3/23/2004 $1,000 Kerry, John http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?txtName=zogby&NumOfThou=0&txt2004=Y&submit=Go%21
ping - note the url
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