ZOGBY CAUGHT PUSH POLLING!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/15/13844/116

Zogby Push Polling?
by RockRichard
Tue Oct 14, 2008 at 10:45:32 PM PDT

Cross posted at Rock the Boat.

This will be brief. Yes, I know Zogby sucks. But news outlets still report their numbers as if they are reliable, so I signed up to take Zogby surveys in order to help shape the narrative.

Today, I got my first survey, and the questions are a bit peculiar:



















The survey is which could be found here http://interactive.zogby.com/s/inew11.cfm is currently closed for maintenence.


"This interactive survey is closed for MAINTENENCE.

The survey will re-open at 12:30PM EST"

LOL. Whenever he personally appears on some cable show, explains his insights, he almost sounds credible, unless you take notes. Then you realize it is all bullshit.

is that for real?

but didnt know how to screen shot.

They are fucked. I hope olberman covers it tonight.

Called me up and said, "You have got to see this shit". We got on the remote desktop so he could show me what he was looking at and sure enough, this was the case.

Time to get this out to the media, move move move!

Please email this to the media.

Un friggin real!

0 be more likely to vote for him

0 be less likely to vote for him

0 it wouldn't affect my vote


If you knew Barack Obama pulled the legs off spiders, would you

0 be more likely to vote for him

0 be less likely to vote for him

0 it wouldn't affect my vote



zogby rocks so damn hard!

Well, first I'd want to know if he eats them the RIGHT way with snakes AND snails or if he eats them with some scary, un-American, Muslim acorn sauce.

That's what I want to know!

:rofl:

Fuck you Zogby. Your polls sucked anyway asshole. :puke:

and Hillary was the one they were asking it about. Fuckers.

But it's interesting to see that they asked the same questions now, as they did back then of Hillary. Where are the questions about mccrap? I wonder if there are any?

If you saw the pictures of John McCain and Michael Jackson tongue kissing would that make you more or less likely to vote for Barack Obama?

Thank you for the information!

A. No
B. Hell No.
C. What part of no didn't you understand?
D. What part of hell no didn't you understand?

he's clearly not progressive, not even a dem.

he'd be more at home on cnn.

now compare me to the these hate filled republicans.

:hi:

who think Arab is a dirty word?

What the hell happened?

And said he saw possible fraud (iirc) after the election.

I took some of his polls back then. I don't remember them being this shitty.

Between then and now there's a big difference...unless he was lying his ass off in '04 to get money from someone.

He is not reliable.

:rant:

I get from the NRA now and then. I always mail the empty envelope back just so they have to pay postage..

Pieces of sheet metal without sharp edges work nicely

Complete trash

I'm sure Barack was cool seeing that, but I'm sure Michelle probably had a fantasy about cutting John Zogby's head off that......

I have a feeling some Republicans paid him to ask those questions, and since he has no scruples he went right along with it.

Gotta call from them last week for the first time ever - they asked me 2 questions - who am I voting for and my age. I'm not excusing them, but I've read this is how the polls work.

Had Obama up by only +4 yesterday

and Obama is up by +10 or more according to

the majority of polls out there.

send it to rachel@msnbc.com

The last summary of national polls at electoral-vote.com was on Wednesday. In ten national polls, all had Obama ahead, with an average lead of 7.7%. Zogby had Obama's lead at 6%. Four polls had Obama's lead larger, three had it smaller, and two were at 6% along with Zogby. So Zogby had the median result, a bit below the mean. See the list .

I agree with the suggestion that this push poll was paid for by a client and would be totally distinct from the numbers that Zogby publicly releases.

how likely would you be to vote for him?

Good grief. How much more stupid could it get?

If you knew his middle name was "Hussein"...

Jesus.

and has been for quite some time

I stopped taking his polls about 2 years ago when the questions started to turn to crapola like this

Plus, his accuracy during the primaries was as bad as it gets.

countdown@msnbc.com

A number of people were saying they hope Olbermann will pick this up... While campaign tricks and the integrity of polls are important issues to talk about, this might not be a good time to try to get this particular story to the mainstream, as it may actually bring up the issues of what rights for illegal immigrants Obama supports, which is one of those divisive no-win topics like abortion, where you're generally better off spending as little time talking about the topic as you can.

It's push polling. I used to work for a marketing firm that did telephone surveys exclusively. I know the difference between message testing and push polling. And, frankly, push polling is often wrapped in the guise of "message testing", when in fact it achieves the goals of push polling.

this is push polling. It is designed to push negative messages about Obama. Now.. the question IS.. WHO paid for that survey? Cuz it's not a survey that the media would be using.

Zogby is a scumbag AND his methodology is flawed. His surveys should not be used along side real random surveys, because his is based upon people who sign up to take surveys.

I know this won't be popular thing to say on D.U., especially during rabid season, but this isn't a push poll.
The key element to push polling is that it contact huge numbers of people. This is because a "push poll" is really
not to determine what people believe, but to sway the election. Clearly this "Zobgy poll" isn't being sent to many people. In fact it's being sent to a bunch of self selectors on the web.

A less representative way of polling the public I cannot think of. So non-representative, that it really isn't message testing either. It's typical inaccurate Zogby crap dressed up as if it means something.

All you people responding to this, think you're saying something by accusing him of having a personal bias. In reality, he's much worse - he's inaccurate. Call him the "Faith based" pollster of the polling world.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

If you ask everyone questions about income, profession, age, race etc, and use this information to weight your answers, you can correct for the biases in your sample fairly well. I guess you can't correct for liking for doing surveys, but I see no reason to think that's correlated with voting intention or much else interesting.

YouGov's polls have in the past been as accurate as anyone else's at predicting UK election results, despite being a self selecting sample because they get all the data they need to do this sort of correction. I've no idea whether Zogby does this.

And frankly, that's pure guesswork, especially in such a change election.

I do no back off on my assertion that Zogby simply doesn't do accurate polling.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

i got a totally different poll from them... i thought zogby was pissed at mcslime

I purposely fudged my position on Obama...I wanted to see what would happen...WOW did I get an eyeful with this push poll.....

Zogby used to have a reputation of being pro-Democratic party. However, this year, he is appearing on Hannity's show and Hannity is constantly quoting Zogby polls to show that the cause is not lost.

I mean, maybe even Zogby would draw the line somewhere.

i asked them why they were push-polling

Who got suckered into this push poll.....I am also glad that it was posted on Kos....I could not figure out how to take a screen shot!
LOL tech challenged

a contact page. http://www.zogby.com/contact/index.cfm You know what to do with that info, right?

To think they used to be considered respectable...

then i canceled my subscription to him

Although many people may not know it, "Zogby" is owned by Dr. James Zogby, an American of Arab descent, who is also the founder and president of the Arab-American Institute, a group dedicated to fighting the negative image of Arab peoples in this country. Why, just today, he released this rebuke to John McCain over the latter's comment that Obama is "not an Arab, he's a decent man."

One might also think that, although Zogby should certainly keep his political opinions to himself in the context of his polling job, his advocacy for the Arab community would place him in opposition to John McCain's slavish devotion to the PNAC principle of American military subjugation of Arab nations, not to mention the "premillenial" fundamentalism of Sarah Palin (which opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, as Israel needs to hold on to every inch of the "promised land," so that Jesus can return to earth and...uh...send all the Jews to Hell after they've killed all the Arabs :crazy: ).

So, why is the "principled" Dr. Zogby allowing his organization to be used as a covert arm of the McCain campaign? For that is exactly what push-polling is; an effort to smear the opposing candidate while appearing "neutral."

Why has Dr. Zogby allowed himself to sell out his own cause? Who prompted him to do so, and how much did they pay for the service? For, while we might all have a word for those who betray their own principles -- traitor -- there's also a word for the one who is willing to throw away their honor and integrity for money...and that word is WHORE.

James Zogby (b. 1945), American founder and president of the Arab American Institute; Brother of John Zogby
John Zogby (b. 1948), American pollster; President & CEO of Zogby International; Brother of James Zogby
Zogby International, a marketing, opinion, and polling research company founded by John Zogby

the misleading questions they were asking.

I guess they just took me off their list.

then they became just as unreliable as the media.

It definitely made me think something was up; I assumed the poll was basically being conducted for some Repug group via Zogby... but if so, that should have been mentioned. I had thought I remembered that Zogby himself was a Democrat, but maybe money talks...?

K&R.

And I remember thinking "gee, he sounds like a Republican operative." Guess so.

Dead giveaway there.

I would be voting for Obama in the previous surveys I've received from them. Still, the type of material in this one makes me question whether they were doing it on behalf of the Repugs or something... that seems like something that they would need to be upfront about.

tks for the correction.

:wtf:

They got angry!

He's desperate for the attention.

I sense a worst person award!

don't organizations like political parties hire firms like Zogby to do polling on occasion? . . . I'm wondering if this was a poll that Zogby initiated, or one that they were being paid to conduct by, say, the Republican party . . . because it certainly has an obvious purpose, i.e. to discredit Obama . . .

Zogby ought not to allow his name to be cheapened by being associated with it. The general public will not see the difference; to most people it would just be a "Zogby" poll.

and has been since I tried to reply to it last night.

Are they part of a vast right wing conspiracy to make the polls close enough to make a rigged election plausible?

this information made me say hmmh...years ago:


Fritz Wenzel (of T.Blade + Coingate fame) Now Working for Zogby


Weird...He allegedly suppresses Coingate story prior to the '04 Election in Ohio and is now working for Zogby. What's up with this?


Saving Ohio

Did a reporter with GOP ties suppress a story that could have cost Bush the White House?

By Bill Frogameni

Pages 1 2


October 6, 2005 | In April 2005, the Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio, began publishing a remarkable series of articles about a well-connected Republican donor, Tom Noe, chair of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign for Lucas County, which encompasses Toledo. The Blade, which had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 2004, discovered that Noe, a Toledo coin dealer, was investing $50 million for the state through the novel practice of coin speculation: buying and selling rare coins to turn a profit. Noe, the Blade revealed, could not account for $10 million to $13 million in the fund.

The paper also divulged that Noe had been placed under federal investigation for allegedly laundering money -- perhaps state money -- to the Bush campaign. The Blade's initial reports on Noe started a chain reaction of related scandals for Ohio's dominant Republicans. Recently, Gov. Bob Taft pleaded no contest to accepting several gifts from influence peddlers -- including Noe -- without reporting them, as law requires. Noe is currently the subject of 13 investigations.

In November 2004, Lucas County was among the most hotly contested areas in the most hotly contested state. Kerry won the county by 45,000 votes, but George W. Bush went on to win Ohio by less than 120,000 votes, which swung the election for him.


But Bush's reelection may have been made possible by a Blade reporter with close ties to the Republican Party who reportedly knew about Noe's potential campaign violations in early 2004 but suppressed the story.

According to several knowledgeable sources, the Blade's chief political columnist, Fritz Wenzel, was told of Noe's potential campaign violations as early as January 2004. But according to Blade editors, Wenzel never gave the paper the all-important tip in early 2004.



-SNIP
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/10/06/ohio/index.html



Zogby International spokesman Fritz Wenzel said that was the case in July when Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Glenn Coin wrote a story about Vice President Cheney’s visit to Utica for a fundraiser for Meier. Wenzel was quoted extensively in the article.

http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=13587



However, as it turns out, both Wenzel and his son had personal relationships with the Noes, who even attended the son's wedding.

In fact, in March 2004, a couple of months after Wenzel got the tip, his son was elected to the Lucas County Republican Central Committee, and from April 15, 2005, to the end of May 2005, Wenzel's son was on the payroll of the Ohio Republican Party.

http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle06092006.html

If you can't trust the poll, why spend a single dime on their products. Plain and simple. If this is true, they are an ex-business.

I've been taking those polls for 2 years. Never seen one "closed for maintenance" before.

Regardless of reliability or anything else, this isn't common in Zogby's polling. In fact I would be willing to bet that this was commissioned by Democrats to determine which areas of attack against Obama would be most effective in order to determine which areas to plan for a point of attack against at a later date. That would be a perfectly legitimate use of a "push" poll.

Pure speculation on my part but I think it is a plausible scenario at the least.

For the record I have absolutely no interest in Zogby or defending/attacking his polling whatsoever.

re: "I would be willing to bet that this was commissioned by Democrats to determine which areas of attack against Obama would be most effective in order to determine which areas to plan for a point of attack against at a later date."

I doubt Dems would commission a poll that would so clearly make recipients of the poll (and any friends they may talk to) less likely to vote for their candidate, especially so close to the election. I mean, that kind of push poll is classically done by the opposition exactly because it is so clearly to their benefit. If Dems honestly wanted to know how these positions affect a person's likelihood to vote for someone, they would ask "If a candidate believed X, would you be more or less likely to vote for him.' NOT "If Obama believed X, would you be more or likely to vote for him." That's not looking for honest information, that's classic dirty tricks.

Secondarily, there's not much "later date" left. And these things haven't been issues in this campaign. And if rights for illegal immigrants does come up, Obama needs to be prepared with his positions and answers, and the results of a poll like this are irrelevant to the fact that he needs to be prepared to talk about these topics if they come up regardless.

so if he sent the poll directly to those who had already stated a medium preference for McCain (he usually gives a range, strong obama, weak obama, undecided, weak mccain, strong mccain) they could gather important data quickly to be able to identify likely areas of attack.

Again, pure speculation, but it's something they actually *should* be doing throughout the election cycle.

I do agree that it looks like a push poll, however, i've participated in quite literally hundreds of Zogby polls and I've never seen one like this (but then my answers would put me in the "hard core democratic partisan" grouping so i'd be unlikley to be the target of such polls.

but Somehow forgot to also grab control of the Polling process.....YEARS AGO?

Really?


:shrug:

The only reason their numbers show Obama leading at all is because the state polling would make liars out of them if they tried to put McFart in the lead. Obama has the electoral votes, almost in a landslide, so there's no fucking way Obama is only leading by "the margin of error" in a nation-wide poll.

"On October 15, 2008, Zogby Interactive blurred polling and campaigning for Senator John McCain (2008 Republican Presidential Candidate) by conducting a push poll (a poll design to push a certain candidate or agenda) by asking several rather out of the ordinary questions about Senator Barack Obama (2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate) in order to push negative policies and issues with Obama to the person that was being polled."

Could this be an elaborate attack, perhaps an attack against-not by-the Repukes?

doncha think?? I watch C-Span every morning I can, now I think I'm sick to my stomach!!

How can you get this information to C-Span?? I can't copy all that and send it to them.

No? How about a Prius?

I'm serious. I thought there was a professional organization for pollsters with a code of ethics that prohibits push polling. Am I imagining this?

Released: October 16, 2008
John Zogby Statement on Political Message Testing


There have been attacks in recent blog posts concerning survey questions Zogby International asked on behalf of a client. The client is Newsmax, a well-known conservative magazine.

The questions were legitimately worded message tests to accurately determine voter sentiment concerning charges leveled against Sen. Barack Obama.

Understand that we at Zogby International conduct a lot of similar research for left, right and center interests and fairly believe that our data is part of a broader process that serves to illuminate real voter sentiment—warts and all. In many instances over the years, voters have strongly disagreed with the interests of our clients and at other times they have agreed—this is what good research is all about.

Our process provides a much more beneficial role to the public discourse than the one-dimensional, adolescent rantings of many blogs, both left and right.
(10/16/2008)

these were not legitimately worded message tests. The basically sullied what little cache they had left in the Zogby name and sold it out to a bunch of paranoid racist fucks push polling.

assholes.

If that's the case why did they yank the poll down for "maintenance"?

I call bullshit!

I think I still get those things in my email but I rarely fill them out anymore.

After Zogby's early call for Kerry, and his call of Obama in New Hampshire, I consider him a joke.

It looks like he's just showed back up on the scene towards the end to produce some "race is tightening" Zogby Interactive polls for the horse race narrative.

I used to routinely get poll requests and I have always answered them all. When the polls are political they always ask your political leanings, i.e. conservative, liberal, moderate, etc. Well I always answered moderate (the truth even though I find that a really odd description). Then, about 6 months ago, I answered "very liberal" just to see if anything changed. Since I have done that I have gotten NO political poll requests from Zogby. Oh I get other polls about which cars I like or which eggs I would buy, but ever since I said "very liberal" (actually think it is progressive with "very liberal" being the parenthetical) I have never again been asked my opinion about a presidential candidate. And while this is anecdotal only, before that I ALWAYS got asked. It may be coincidence, but sure struck me as odd.

and i see zogby numbers now and i've thought for months: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ZOGBY???

now, i see.

motherfuckers.

So Gallup and Zogby are out.

I hope.

Both the Zogby Brothers are of middle eastern ethnic extraction. It is no secret that this administration has demonized people of that ethnic group to make political hay. Why, then, is Zogby carrying water for Republicans? I can see playing things down the middle: after all, there is a little matter of professional cred. That said, this is hardly objective questioning.

Did someone who works for Zogby go off the reservation at Warp 10 or what? I think he owes all of us some answers.

Sure do hope KO gets him on his show ans sweats him.

He did it for money - he's a whore.

See response #104 above.

Who can trust them now?

will work best, then they'll know where to put their money.