Posted on 11/12/2005 2:00:10 PM PST by new yorker 77
Public Opinion: Polling, they say, is part science and part art. If so, the art part that some polling organizations are practicing is getting blacker by the day.
Take Zogby International. The last time we visited the "highly regarded, nonpartisan polling company," as its clients refer to it, was early July. While the rest of us were celebrating the nation's 229th birthday, Zogby was doing its patriotic part by releasing a poll on how many Americans think President Bush should be impeached.
Never mind that few outside the rabid left were even entertaining the "i" word. Zogby apparently felt it was time they started. Seems that President John Zogby felt President Bush "did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq."
What Zogby found June 27-29 was that 42% of Americans supported impeachment and 50% did not. The result was significant enough, Zogby said, that he intended to follow up.
Sure enough, he was back in the field Oct. 29 through Nov. 2. But instead of simply asking people if they supported impeachment or not, as was the case in the first poll, he tossed in a hypothetical:
"If the president did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." Agree or disagree? (53% agreed this time and 42% disagreed.)
The operative word, of course, is "if." As in: "If so-and-so is still beating his wife, do you agree that somebody ought to do something about it?"
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(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Some might call that a leading question. Those in the business might call it a "push-poll question." Whatever it is, we'd say it's inappropriate unless the subject of impeachment has been in the news. And as proof it hasn't, we submit this from the Web site of AfterDowningStreet.org, which paid for the second Zogby poll:
"The strong support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests . . ." (emphasis ours).
So here we have a case of an activist group frustrated that it hasn't gotten more traction hiring a pollster to help it get some. In fact, AfterDowningStreet.org admits it hired Zogby to do the poll after a group called Democrats.com failed to get major polling organizations to include an impeachment question in their regular polling.
AfterDowningStreet.org — a "coalition of veterans, peace and political activist groups" — said it continues to urge polling firms to get aboard the impeachment bandwagon. "If they do not, (we) will continue to commission regular polls."
This wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that another reputable polling firm apparently has taken the bait. Ipsos, the French firm that America's Associated Press uses for its polling, asked a similar impeachment question Oct. 8-9 (and found 50% in favor).
The media have enough of a credibility problem without professional pollsters, for whom credibility is everything, getting logrolled by activist groups with whom they might agree.
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My take on it:
In 2004, Zogby completely ruins himself with a mid-day poll showing a Kerry landslide. LIAR.
Then, Zogby participates in a liberal action to uncover "Voting irregularities".
Next, Zogby goes on an anti-war rant.
Now, Zogby along with Ipsos - "The FRENCH polling firm that AP uses" are polling hypothetical impeachment questions about President Bush.
Maybe he should join up with his terrorist appeasing brother James Zogby.
Great points.
Zogby has the credibility of Dan Rather, Marla Mapes, Jayson Blair....
I wonder if he made it into "Unhinged" by Michelle Malkin.
"I wonder if he made it into "Unhinged" by Michelle Malkin."
If he didn't, he should have.
More Zogby "Special Sauce".
Zogby is an Anti American idiot.
Zogby Polling Seeks Damage Control After Election Day Flub
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Following an Election Day prediction that Democratic candidate John Kerry would win more than 300 electoral votes and the presidency, one of America's most well known polling firms continued the job Wednesday of explaining its flawed projection.
Shawnta Watson Walcott, communications director for Zogby International, joined a group of liberal Democrats at a faux congressional hearing focused on whether fraud influenced the Nov. 2 outcome.
"... it has become increasingly clear that this election has produced unprecedented levels of suspicion regarding its outcome, and we join this panel discussion in an attempt to find a resolution to these issues," said Walcott, who represented the firm's president and long time political pollster John Zogby at the forum sponsored by Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.
On Election Day, Zogby predicted that Kerry would win 311 electoral votes. For much of that afternoon, he also rated the state of Virginia as too close to call. Not only did President Bush end up winning Virginia by 9 percentage points over Kerry, he won 286 electoral votes, over 3.3 million popular vote more than Kerry and, of course, re-election.
But with a Rayburn House Office Building meeting room as the backdrop, Judiciary Committee Democrats, liberal special interest groups and individuals like Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder Jesse Jackson Wednesday alleged that the election had been marred by fraud and malfunctioning voting machines.
Walcott told the group assembled that Zogby International had questions of its own pertaining to the election.
"We have received thousands of letters and phone calls regarding irregularities - many of which center on early exit polling results that were uncharacteristically inaccurate in several battleground states; questionable practices at polling stations that may have resulted in votes not being counted accurately; and in Ohio, as with other swing states, the automated Diebold machines were particularly disturbing because they offered no voting receipts" she said.
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http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200412\POL20041209a.html
ITHACA NY--Heavily criticizing the Bush administration’s Middle East policy, pollster John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, spoke yesterday evening at the Alice H. Cook House to a large group of faculty and students in a lecture entitled “The Political Landscape: The United States and the Middle East.”...
“When you stop and weigh [the war] and think in terms of the lives being lost and weigh it against Saddam’s crimes, yes, there might be a rationale, but you’ve got to know where you’re going; we’ve had no plans other than to bomb the hell out of Baghdad, paint targets on our troops … I feel no glory or justification [in this war] ... I want to pound some sense into those people,” Zogby said.
Zogby examined public opinion trends in the U.S. and Middle East since President George W. Bush’s election in 2000, comparing Bush’s approval ratings to a “bouncing ball,” bouncing high in the air at first, but eventually bouncing lower and lower and falling faster. On 9/11, Zogby said Bush got his first “bounce” of the ball as citizens bonded with leaders and themselves, resulting with Bush obtaining approval ratings as high as 90 percent. Yet only two weeks after the attacks, Zogby noted in a poll that only 50 percent of Americans supported the war on terror if it would last over two years.
“[Americans] want the war won, the war over and our troops out of harm’s way ... I learned that the US was still very much in the post-Vietnam era,” Zogby said.
The rest of the story from yesterday...HERE
Add to the fact that they over-sample Democrats, and you have the results as well. Let's face it..Zogby is a Dem leftist...and they want to MAKE SURE they get in the WH in 2008...and the only way to do so, they think, is by claiming all this crap about lying about Iraq and impeachment. The Republicans better take it seriously, because the Dems are. The Dems have never STOPPED campaigning for president.
I think the President thought that the Iraqi constitution passing would let people know that we are on track with Iraq...but the MSM is making sure that GOOD news is underreported.
Zogby is just another liberal, jerk-weed, moonbat!
I trust Scott Rasmussen, and that's about it.
And I have poll numbers that say the United States is too focus group driven.
Zogby is a PR/ad agency of the DNC. He's just like the ad agency hired by Procter & Gamble to put out commercials claiming their brand is better and more people prefer their products.
Not really. There is a defective part of human nature that makes certain propaganda very effective. Of course, the weaker the mind, the more susceptible it is to the power of suggestion, which "propaganda" polling exactly becomes...
The Operative Word seems to be "IF" and of course the President did NOT LIE about his reasons for going to War but IF he had he should be Impeached.
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