Is Zogby The Worst Pollster In The World

I think he got one race right in the primaires, but that was just pure dumb luck.

He's always wrong.

:rofl:

Red Reed will never be forgiven for his GREAT review of "SpaceBalls".

My partner Rhythm and I both did. We worked there when we were living in Utica, New York. The call center is right on Genesee Street, not too far from where we lived, so it was easy to just walk to work. Zogby's actual office was over on Bleecker, but he spent a lot of time at the call center, listening and making sure everything was being done right. We actually met the guy a few times--he doesn't mind mingling with his call center employees.

I'm afraid I don't have anything to say that you're going to like hearing, but here it goes anyway. The call center is in Utica, and hires Utica residents--New York Democrats are the majority there, FYI. We sit at a computer that dials random numbers for us, while wearing headsets, and we read from a script. I never saw a script that seemed biased or badly-worded. We don't call some area codes more than others unless we're doing a contracted market research survey for a specific company or business. The political surveys are totally random.

That being said--there IS a big difference in how many completed surveys come from certain parts of the nation, but it isn't Zogby's doing. The hard truth of the matter is that people on the West Coast and in the Northeast (with the SOLE exception of New Hampshire) are far less likely to actually complete a survey than the people in the South and the Midwest. When we're calling California, we fully expect to hear "I don't have time for this" followed by a hang-up click at least ten times before you can actually get someone to answer the damned survey. Guess which California county has the highest completion rate? A hint: it's the reddest one.

Maybe if our liberal brethren could be bothered to answer the damned phone surveys (and yes, a lot of them ARE long and tedious and repetitive) we'd get more accurate numbers. California, I'm looking at you. Please don't get all pissy and self-righteous, either. I'm not talking about YOU guys--we're all political junkies, obviously, so I'm sure that none of YOU have hung up on a survey request. It's all of our friends and neighbors (especially in large cities) who are good about showing up to vote, but bad about "wasting time" on a survey that are the root of the problem.

Southerners and Midwesterners are fantastic about completions. They just LOVE to chat away, and the completion rates for those areas are very, very good. Get the completion rates for the more liberal locales to go up, and I think you'll see a big difference.

Honestly, I get really tired of people blaming pollsters. Whenever the numbers look good for us, we love them. When they don't, then they're all a bunch of right-wing hacks. I worked with the people making those calls and collecting that data--they are NOT right-wing hacks. The vast majority are true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool New York liberals. If the numbers are off, it's in large part because OUR side is full of people who are too damned busy/private/annoyed with the universe to bother "wasting time" on a stupid phone survey.

Having sat in on numerous meetings where writers worried each other over making sure that the questions were without bias, I can vouch firsthand to their objectivity. And we on the phones all knew full-well that 'leading' a respondent in any way was grounds for immediate termination. Zogby's organization is no-bullshit like that. Should i ever find myself living back in the Utica area, i would happily get back on the phones, because i have confidence in the integrity of the organization.

I have been called everything but the 'son of a motherless goat' by Western and Northeastern blue-staters too busy to give their opinions, but greeted with verbal open arms by those in places where the pace of life is a little slower, usually 'red states' in the South and Midwest. If the data ever seems skewed, that is the biggest factor -- you can't get demographically perfect data if one group is too busy to talk to you.

Then he's the best pollster in the world.