This has turned into quite a little kerfuffle, leaving the Zogby people with
a lot of explaining to do. Charles Franklin at Pollster.com takes the last Zogby
poll that purported Clinton losing to the Republican wanna bes and tears it
apart from top to bottom.
A new Zogby Interactive poll, conducted using volunteers over the internet,
has produced some odd results for trial heats involving Senator Clinton against
all four top Republican opponents. What makes this especially odd is that
the results are not equally unusual for Obama. … ..…. .. The hugely surprising result is that the Zogby poll finds Sen. Hillary
Clinton losing to all four top Republicans in head-to-head trial heats. What
makes that surprising is that Clinton LEADS all four of those Republicans
in the trend estimates based on all other polling by between 3.8 and 11.6
points. Zogby also has Clinton losing to Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee by
5 points. There are too few Clinton-Huckabee trial heat polls from other organizations
for me to compute a trend estimate for that comparison. …
That didn’t stop the Hillary haters from spreading their Clinton Derangement
Syndrome far and wide, on both sides of the political aisle.
But since when do big pollsters decide to defensively blog about a leading
candidate’s pollster issuing a
strong rebuke on a cable network (h/t Newsbusters),
without instead simply proving their poll data is correct. Just prove your data. Oh, that’s right, you can’t on this one. Hey, but that didn’t stop Newsbusters and others from providing a forum for Zogby in order to push the usual anti Clinton garbage.
This
response from Zogby Director of Communications Fritz Wenzel is just odd.
Mark Penn is one of the best in the polling business, which is why he works
for such high-level clients as Hillary Clinton. But he should know better
than almost anyone that Zogby has long been doing online polls, and doing
it with as much accuracy and success as anyone in the business. How should
he know this? Because no political campaign requests copies of our polling
results more often than Mark Penn’s office.As Newsbusters mentions, Zogby International’s online polling division has
nearly a decade of experience and is a leader in identifying a reliable and
accurate methodology that matches the changes we see in how our society communicates.
The vast majority of likely voters today uses the Internet to express their
opinions. We are there to accurately capture those opinions.
This is classic: “Zogby has long been doing online polls, and doing
it with as much accuracy and success as anyone in the business. … The vast
majority of likely voters today uses the Internet to express their opinions.
We are there to accurately capture those opinions.”
Does anyone else besides me and reader Canaan believe a pollster who is supposed
to be neutral should rebut a campaign’s charge of a bad poll by ranting
in a blog post over it?
Because Mark Penn is a quality pollster himself, we chalk up his contention
that our poll is “meaningless” as a knee–jerk reaction by
a campaign under pressure coming down the stretch. Several other polls –
Zogby surveys and others – have shown her national lead and her leads
in early–voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire have shrunk. This
is not unusual. These presidential contests usually tighten as the primaries
and caucuses approach.
That Clinton’s lead has “shrunk” in Iowa and New Hampshire is not
surprising. Guess what? It will likely tighten up even further as we get towards the primaries. Obama or Edwards might win Iowa, which wouldn’t shock anyone, least of all the Clinton camp, I’m sure.
However, that’s not what the Zogby poll contended. It contended that Clinton
would lose to all top tier Republican candidates. That’s quite a finding when
other polls have not shown that reality.
In fact, as you may know by now, the
Gallup poll released at the same time showed Clinton in a tight race with
Republicans, but still beating them all, which is just the opposite of the Zogby
poll, but it got no play or airtime whatsoever; not on Scarborough, not on Matthews,
nowhere. It’s simply more fun to spin (and fabricate) that Clinton is collapsing whether she
is or not.
The other problem is that this isn’t just about Clinton. Whoever is our nominee could be subjected to the same nonsense from Zogby. Unfortunately, most are too stuck in their idolatry mode, preferring to hate Hillary and spout anything negative about her, and aren’t thinking that far ahead.
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