Zogby says, "We blew it." (Why some pollsters got it so wrong)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | November 10, 2002 | The Wall Street Journal

[fatguy]

Just before election day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a stunning poll about the governor's race in Illinois: GOP candidate Jim Ryan was ahead.

The Republican's 43.5 to 43.2 percent edge over Democrat Rod Blagojevich, though tiny and statistically insignificant, landed with a bang in the world of Illinois politics because many earlier surveys had shown Ryan to be far behind. Moreover, the poll was conducted by nationally known pollster John Zogby, of Zogby International in Utica, N.Y., acclaimed for his accuracy in the past two presidential campaigns. Zogby told the Post-Dispatch that he had personally affirmed its accuracy.

[lelio]

I never answer phone surveys. Why? They're always 10 minutes long! I don't want to waste my time with this. Maybe if they sent me $5 I would do it.
Plus most of the callers barely are smart enough to dial the phone. I had one that axed me to rank something on the scale of 1 to 5 and then repeated what each one meant. I said that this was totally meaningless as I'll rank something different than the next guy and after 20 questions everything is going to be "highly likely / not likely" Couldn't understand my point.

[RS]

Anyone ever do a study on the numbers of polls that Zogby and others "get wrong" when Republicans win compared to when Dems win ?

[John Lenin]

Zogby should throw in the towel, he's washed up.

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

People still answer their phones, in this era of caller ID, voicemail, answering machines, cell phones, email, faxes, pagers, the internet....?

If I don't know who is calling, I don't pick up the phone, period. And I certainly wouldn't pick up the phone if I knew it was a pollster.

We have absolutely no need for these opinion-forming devices masquerading as "opinion polls". The sooner opinion polls are obsolete, the sooner we can get a more honest form of elections going, and the harder it will be for the media to manipulate the results.

[joesnuffy]

Zogby a little biased towards dems?....

[friendly]

The highly intelligent people who get their news uncensored through Fox or the Internet generally don't cooperate with the democrat spin doctors, oops I meant pollsters from ABC, CBS, CNN, Time, Newsweek, ad nauseum.

These democrat fronts are never again going to be accurate.

[iopscusa]

Exactly, we do not need no stankin'POLLS!

[fatguy]

I never answer phone surveys.

Isn't in our interest to answer these pollers?

[newfreep]

I read before Tuesday the DOJ was sending 400+ agents to oversee specific precincts. I would hazard a guess this kept the fraud down so Zogby's special sauce was not accurate.

[fatguy]

Is there a liberal bias story behind the media's polling cooperative refusing to publish their results?

[Straight Vermonter]

Zogby should throw in the towel, he's washed up.

The one on his head?

[irv]

They went through the entire article without mentioning an important reason why people no longer want to participate: Because they know the poll questions are biased to produce a particular result and refuse to take part in the lie.

That's why I always hang up on them, anyway.

[fatguy]

I was reading last week on the democraticundergound.com how many RATS were sure that the GOP had inflicted massive voter faud upon them because the polls they paid attention to over the weekend were RAT friendly.

Of course, I felt the same way two years ago -- but I was right.

[45semi]

Not only that, they were doing a LOT of this:



45semi



My Political Cartoon Page

[friendly]

Isn't in our interest to answer these pollers?

In my opinion you do not give any aid to the enemy.

[longtermmemmory]

If you have family abroad you do not necessarily have the ability to ignore unknown number unknown name. I agree with an earlier poster who said that republican leaning poll results are more scrutenized than democrat leaning polls. I am willing to bet that VNS early results showed republicans leading.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

I was polled on three occasions in the past month. All three calls were on a seldom-used line that I previously had connected to my modem, before I got a high-speed connection. One was a local survey, one was statewide (NJ) and one was national. I think it is better to answer and see your results added to the total. When your candidate is perceived to be ahead, it energizes the base. On the flip size, many people perceive the election as some sort of football game to be handicapped. They are more interested in voting for the eventual winner than in furthering a political philosophy which they've never taken the time to develop.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Zog got nabbed hitting the sauce to hard...so he has to come up with explanation.

[infowarrior]

I am willing to bet that VNS early results showed republicans leading...

VNS' famed "exit polls" were not in play this election. The "official" take was that their new software for exit polling was "unreliable", however unofficiailly, I suspect that they were told by DOJ to knock off the vote scamming they've been doing for the last couple of decades. It is to be devoutly hoped, and deeply desired that they never re-appear...

the infowarrior