I know there's a big difference between Zogby's telephone polls and the Zogby Interactive web-based surveys, but it seems that the telephone polls are headed in the direction of the Internet polls, quality-wise. And John Zogby's commentary is already there.

John's pitching a pants tent for a poll that has him down five points?

Even ignoring the fact that this poll is unreliably frenetic, that just sounds like he's grasping for straws.

Either way, this will just help the GOTV effort for Obama.

The Polls don't matter... The Election will come down to how Swing Voters swing.

The Top 50 Swing Voters:

#50 - Hockey Moms - Demographic Power Play
#47 - People with STDs - Burning For Change
#40 - Anonymous Sperm Donors - Swimming Against The Tide
#35 - Pot Heads - The Forgotten Demo
#27 - Joe The Plumber - Presidential Crack

http://swingvoters.wordpress.com

I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the one thing that I keep thinking is that, as long as there is ANY national poll that keeps saying the race is tight, the Republican Party will have just enough wind in their sails to challenge election results in certain states. Somebody talk me down, please....

(On the flip side, the more that David Frum et al. talk about how the election is over, the happier I get about the prospects of the results NOT being challenged.)

Considering the few points "margin of error" and fluctuating voter tastes (the on-the-fencers tipped this way and that by things like Ashley Todd's hoax or worrying about Obama being tested per Biden), it is inevitable that the given numbers will fluctuate around like temperatures, even during a seasonal shift. But pundits and the candidates like the sound and trope of the "tightening" of the race. Yet statistically that will appear to happen half of the time between comparisons regardless of what deep moves are actually happening.

You have to understand what the electorate is building towards. That means getting into their heads and knowing what they like and don't, not just watching ups and downs. (Same issue for DJIA, climate change, etc.)

tyrannogenius

One thing I have read about Zogby is that if some person or organization want's a certain poll result (and is willing to pay for it) then questions can be frame to get those results. I don't know if this issue seeps into these polls but loose standards may be part of the company.

I watch polls very closely and have for a long time, Zogby is a joke.

The one to watch is PEW Research, these guys don't post daily stuff like the others, but they have been spot on in previous elections. As of 10/21 they show Obama leading McCain 52 to 38,

I'd say that's about right.

http://people-press.org/report/462/obamas-lead-widens

Is it possible that there's Zogby-the-person and Zogby-the-organization? I heard John Zogby say on a late night sat radio talk show no more than 3 nights ago that he didn't give McCain a chance -- and he sounded personally quite elated. Do I remember correctly that Zogby's numbers were substantially off in earlier elections? Anyone remember?

Speaking of hearing stuff on sat radio, a couple of hours ago I heard Palast describe his research, from state to state, into voter suppression by the RNC. Okay, he's generally an alarmist. But the numbers were nasty. He has a piece in Rolling Stone about it.

Zogby talks about polling the way stock brokers talk about the market: they can never, ever, EVER tell you in advance what's going to happen, but they always, ALWAYS know WHY it happened after the fact.

Meaning: Zogby and stock brokers are full of shit.

See also here for a comment about Zogby:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/that-zogby-poll.html

RCP average--Obama up 7.8%.
Pollster.com average--Obama up 8.5%

Pretty stable to me over the last week.

We're going to see a lot of fluctuations on individual polls--IBD/TIPP is another one. Don't be shocked if one of the trackers show a McCain lead by election day.

The averages are what count now, despite what Jerome Armstrong says.

RCP average--Obama up 7.8%.
Pollster.com average--Obama up 8.5%

Pretty stable to me over the last week.

We're going to see a lot of fluctuations on individual polls--IBD/TIPP is another one. Don't be shocked if one of the trackers show a McCain lead by election day.

The averages are what count now, despite what Jerome Armstrong says.

Zogby, like Hotline and GWU Battleground, are heavily susceptible to random swings.

Rasmussen, otoh, is cautious, detailed, and sophisticated, and their daily tracker has been very consistent. Nate Silver suggested several days ago that Rasmussen was the best pollster. Although Nate is openly pro-Obama, he's also very objective about stats. At the time he said that Rasmussen had Obama up only +4, and since that has grown slowly to +8 and stayed there, which probably reflects the temporary mini-bounce McCain got with Republicans and independent men after the last debate.

Rasmussen comments that the race has been remarkably consistent for over a month, with Obama between 50-52 and McCain between 43-46 (it's now 52-44), but with the number of supporters saying they are certain to vote for their candidate now higher than ever (48% of total vote now "certain" Obama versus 39% for McCain). And that is probably the correct reading.

Gallup too has echoed that sentiment, although their smaller samples and generally less sophisticated methodology has resulted in more randomness than Rasmussen.

Is it possible that there's Zogby-the-person and Zogby-the-organization?

Probably two different people. The one you heard on the radio was probably Zogby-not-the-pollster, who is a strong Obama supporter. Google them.

PW:

There's a Zogby that writes for HuffPo which isn't John Zogby. Could it be him?

I see Pitbull Palin is really going at it today--saying that a vote for Obama is flirting with 'Socialism' and implying he is cocky and detailing how he's celebrating his victory before it's happened.

The crowd is appropriately hate-filled and booing.

And once again, she is in her element--she is really reveling in it, smiling and energized in her hatred in a way that sounds, looks and feels horrifying.

Here's the article PW referenced, required reading in my opinion, about voter suppression:

Block the Vote - by Robert F Kennedy Jr and Greg Palast

John Zogby at Huffington Post is the same John Zogby who does the polling. And yes he's very pro-Obama.

If I remember correctly from the primaries, his polls always tracked heavier towards Clinton on the weekends, same as for McCain during the general. I think it's because they both had older, more traditional fan base. In other words, Obama's peeps are active younger people, out and about and busy on weekends. His Wed-Fri polls then seemed to come in line with the other polls, only to fall back in the next few days.

I think after this election, when he looks back on his companies performance, he might want to reconfigure how he does it, or his weightings etc.

And we should use those numbers that McCain finds so hopeful and helpful to re-ignite and inspire us each individually to get out and do more for Obama and the down-tickets in our areas.

or got to my.barackobama.com/calls and place some calls to swing state voters.

If McCain and Palin lose and Palin suffers for ethics violations will she spend the next few years penning her autobiography/political philosophy titled "My Struggle; The story of a Hockey Mom".

She'll be a hero to the shrinking angry white militia vote.

No, there's another Zogby who writes at HuffPost regularly, named James Zogby.

You can find his bio here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby

(Maybe they're brothers?)

The simple aggregation of polls makes, to me, the most sense to watch for a solid idea of what is actually going on. Not that polls are all that predictive but we all do need something to chat about.

Discussed here.

"The wind blows over the surface of the lake. In this way, the effects of the invisible are made visible." - I Ching

For crying out loud, a polling professional like Zogby knows better than to assume each poll represents absolute reality. (But it probably wouldn't get him on TV as often if he admitted that.) By its very nature, polling is a statistical application that contains noise in its results. Polls hop around a little even if the electorate is stock still! Here's a simple example which even Zogby should understand: [Link]

Isn't Zogby the same guy who swore in 2004 that his polls were showing that John Kerry was going to win?

If so, I hope he's showing the same amount of accuracy today as he did then.

This post reminded me that I used to be on Zogby's internet poll mailing list and I looked and noticed that I haven't received an invitation for some time now.

Hmmm, I wonder why that might be? I mean, every poll asks where you're from, what party you're in, who you've voted for and who you plan to vote for.

Maybe there's some selective filtering going on here.

A national poll can't be more accurate than an average of state and local polls. State and local polls have been steady for a week. It sounds like people have made up their minds.

Following up on PW and doubtful's Kennedy-Palast link, it does make fancy discussion about polls seem rather fatuous, if thousands of legitimate voters are illegitimately purged from the roll, their provisional ballots discarded, harassed at the polls, kept waiting then turned away when the polls close before they can vote, have their vote switched by a "defective" machine, and have no guarantee that their vote will be counted. This article, as doubtful says, is required reading. Greg Palast has every reason to be alarmed by the information he has amassed. If you wish a more scholarly, though nonetheless shocking, analysis, check out "Loser Take All" (2008) edited by Mark Crispin Miller.

Here is an excerpt from the first page of the Rollong Stone article:

This November, what happened to Maez* will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

*On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

As bdop4 above said about being on Zogby's internet list and not receiving emails, I continue to receive same but when the first question is 'What state do you live in?' and I answer Massachusetts, it's the end of the questionnaire. Of course the particular poll may be targeted elsewhere but heh, your webmaster knows my IP and location so are they just lazy?

On cspan's book tv yesterday there was a talk by an author, David Moore, about his book "The Opinion Makers: etc" which told me enough about polls to make me give them very little credence in general. This close to the election it's apt to be more accurate, but early in the primaries they were wildly off-base, really nothing more than a poll of name recognition, but that didn't keep the pundits from drawing conclusions.

The reason Zogby's polls are off are because he is using the same voter ID numbers as 2004, even though Democrats have picked up at least 10 points in partisan ID since then.

she spend the next few years penning her autobiography/political philosophy titled "My Struggle:..."

Yeah. And published in Germany under its translated title: Mein Kampf.

Yeah. And published in Germany under its translated title: Mein Kampf.
Palin is way better in the original German.

Polls don't matter. Undecideds *do* matter. And the fact is, uninformed undecided are going to go with the "trusty" old war hero with an "American" name.

Most polls currently show Obama at around 50 or 51%. With a little randomness and most undecideds going to his opponent, he could still conceivably lose.

DO NOT COAST, PEOPLE! Volunteer, give money, give time, talk to your friends and family about the importance of voting, and most importantly of all, VOTE!

Latest from the Z-man:
Obama 49.9
McCain 45.1

But I think today was slightly better than Saturday for Obama. What happened on Friday and Saturday, McCain was able to dominate with his economic message with Obama off the trail on Friday, and on Saturday, McCain had a pretty good day on the stump.

Zogby leaks his polls results at night to Drudge and Fox to get HITS on his site. When the polls show an Obama bump, they don't get linked and hyped by Drudge. So: Zogby needs them too look "tight" to get the traffic and attention. Does this color what he does? I'll leave that question to you data pros.

We need OVERWHELMING numbers at the voting booth. Otherwise, get ready to loose another election to the Diebold and ES&S vote flipping, machine freezing, counting backwards, undervoting, non-auditable, paperless experts. Join the MOveOn.org campaign for change. They need callers to swing states from any state in the USA. Check their website for calling parties in your zipcode. They need us now! We can still act. ("Pssst...DO something.")

According to Wikipedia, John and James ARE brothers.

In a similar vein, I'm not sure who does the exit polls (the news corporations like Disney, GE, and Murdoch's mega-conglomerate, I believe.)But as we shall see, the exit polls, nowadays, are usually adjusted so that their numbers reflect the voting machine totals. "There. See. It's all matched up. No problem here folks. Move along. Nothing to see." Polls used to have integrity and serve a function, among them, a check on the legitimacy of the election results. Now many are simply a tool of the Ruling Party. Is this really America?

I wonder when was the last time Zogby polled any minorities for ANY poll.