Friday, November 21, 2008

Zogby/Ziegler Poll: Funny Yet Sad

Thanks to my friend, Pat, for sending me this.



It's from this site. What the crafters of the video did was to collect anecdotal evidence based on questions from this Zogby Poll conducted on behalf of John Ziegler. Ziegler got attacked for the poll with charges that it's a "push poll". Zogby stepped up to explain why it wasn't:

We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion.

Of course, Ziegler was also attacked fiercely by people like this left-wing hack. Here's Ziegler's must-read response. Excerpt:

[accusation] "You were just out to make Obama voters look stupid and you are probably a racist"

Nothing could be further from the truth. We went out of our way to find articulate people who thought they were informed about the election. I did not even choose the subjects myself (for whatever it is worth, they were chosen by a black female). The reason there are slightly more blacks than whites in the video is that we went to a "black" area of town in the morning when we had more light and then it got dark faster than I expected in the "white" area.

The point of all this is to direct the finger at the news media, not so much at the voters. There are plenty of idiots on both sides of the political divide, but my concern here is that the news media coverage failed to make the electorate educated enough to produce a legitimately informed vote.

It's funny how the left can be so angry even when their guy wins. After all, when we are told that Bush and McCain voters are a bunch of toothless gun-happy dumb-asses, we laugh. Don't we?

For the record, I think this is a great job at exposing the influence that the media has and misuses. But Ziegler's conclusion at the end that the election was "illegitimate" goes a little far. John McCain's failing to find a coherent focus throughout his campaign can't be counted out. Bush fought against the same media and prevailed.

11 comments:

  1. Voters may be ignorant, but you can't show that voters are more ignorant about Obama than McCain unless you ask similarly difficult questions about Obama and McCain. Ziegler asked three obvious questions about McCain and Palin drawn from statements and events occurring in the last three months. He asked questions about Obama and Biden based on obscure statements during the primaries and events that happened ten to twenty years ago.

    It is also impossible to show that Obama voters are more ignorant than McCain voters without asking any questions of McCain voters.

    The poll was worthless.

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  2. He asked questions about Obama and Biden based on obscure statements during the primaries and events that happened ten to twenty years ago.

    I'm assuming you meant ten to twenty months ago, but even that isn't accurate. For example, Biden's under reported comments to supporters in Seattle about Barry being tested with an international crisis was made about two weeks before the general election.

    It is also impossible to show that Obama voters are more ignorant than McCain voters without asking any questions of McCain voters.

    The poll was worthless.


    Nope. Obama won, so whether McCain voters know all the answers to the questions asked of the Obama voters is irrelevant.

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  3. "...and events that happened ten to twenty years ago."

    Seems I misread this. I'm guessing you're referencing the question about Biden's plagiarism. That it happened 20 some odd years ago is beside the point. It's clear the Obama voters who were interviewed got the bulk, if not all, of their information from the MSM, which not only negatively reported trivialities about Sarah Palin as earth shattering news, but perpetuated the misattribution of comments to Palin that she never made.

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  4. Biden's plagiarsim problem occurred in 1987 and Obama challenged his rivals nominating petitions in 1997. The voters did not demonstrate any familiarity with these events but they were not asked about any similarly remote events concerning Palin and McCain so I don't think their lack of familiarity with those events proves any disparity in their knowledge. It could be that they did not know anything about any remote events in any of the candidates careers.


    53.3% of the voters of the Obama voters knew that Biden had said that Obama would be tested. However, Lieberman had said the same thing earlier and Mcain made it such a big talking point that I suspect many people heard it from him first. The fact that 20.9% attributed the statement to McCain might simply reflect that.

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  5. "Ziegler asked three obvious questions about McCain and Palin drawn from statements and events occurring in the last three months."

    Vinny is missing the point entirely. Zeiglers point was that these questions were "obvious" because the mainstream media put their subject matter front and center in its reporting. the media decides what ultimately becomes, in Vinny's words, "obvious".

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  6. Zeiglers point was that these questions were "obvious" because the mainstream media put their subject matter front and center in its reporting. the media decides what ultimately becomes, in Vinny's words, "obvious".

    I realize that this was Ziegler's belief. I just don't see how his poll really helps to establish the point.

    The Obama voters did fine on the redistributing wealth question and they did pretty well on the question about the "testing" comment. These questions dealt with issues that arose during the same time period as the issues that formed the basis for the questions about McCain and Palin. I am willing to bet they would have done well on a "lipstick on a pig" question, too. The questions they did less well on were the ones about statements made during the primaries and events that occurred ten to twenty years earlier.

    I could argue that the Obama voters knew about the negative stuff about both sides that came up between the convention and election day. We can't say whether they were equally ignorant about the earlier negative stuff because they were only asked those kind of questions about one side.

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  7. Vinny is cracking me up further. I don't know how you can call a poll like this "worthless" when it serves to highlight perfectly how a candidate won. If a dumbass McCain supporter didn't know anything about, for example, the Keating 5 thing, or that Palin's unmarried daughter got pregnant, what is the point? Their team lost.

    But this is more interesing to me: you can judge the worth of the poll by the effect it was on the sore winners. It's kind of like the Seahawks fans pointing out that Roethlisberger didn't have a very impressive game during Superbowl 40. But those sour grapes are understandable because their team lost! Are the libs who got their guy elected already having misgivings?

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  8. "they were only asked those kind of questions about one side."

    didn't they ask who said there were 57 states? obama said that. therefore the questions were about both sides, not just one. people were programmed to think there was only one stupid side, therefore they assumed every stupid remark was made by one side. you are an equally impressive example of a media parrot.

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  9. There were no questions asked about McCain and Palin based on matters that arose prior to the conventions while there were questions about statements Obama made in January(coal) and May(57 states) and about Obama's campaign for the state senate ten years ago and about Biden's presidential campaign twenty years ago.

    The poll doesn't tell us whether the Obama voters actually knew less about Obama/Biden negatives than McCain Palin negatives or whether they simply weren't paying close attention prior to the conventions and so knew less about earlier issues regardless of which candidates they pertained to.

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  10. Vinny cannot see the forest for all the imaginary trees.

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  11. "There were no questions asked about McCain and Palin based on matters that arose prior to the conventions while there were questions about statements Obama made in January(coal) and May(57 states)"

    so obama magically stopped saying stupid things after january! isn't that interesting! kind of like where everything mccain said in 2000 and during the republican primary was "straight talk", but everything he said after the 2008 primaries ended was quasi-racist and disturbing. kinda like that, right?

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