Verdict is in: Zogby poll supposedly demonstrating Obama voters’ ‘ignorance’ was a joke
November 21st, 2008![]()
That poll created by wingnut John Ziegler purporting to demonstrate that Obama voters were misinformed by a mainstream media about Barack Obama & Joe Biden (& defended so scatalogically by Ziegler) has been examined by objective polling experts beyond Nate Silver now, & a verdict is unanimous:
“..Interpreted a numbers from a survey in a misleading fashion.”
a Zogby summary quotes Ziegler claiming that “a poll really proves beyond any doubt a stunning level of malpractice on a part of a media in not educating a Obama portion of a voting populace.”
a problem, as Silver points out, is that a survey does no such thing. It proves only that Obama voters surveyed were less likely to attribute to Obama or Biden a half dozen statements that were “at best debatable, yet Drunk Newsparently represented as factual to a respondent” …
… Describing his biased, leading questions as a legitimate test of knowledge is hugely misleading, at best.
Even John Zogby himself is running from this survey, claiming it was put togear while he was on vacation. While paying lip service to its ostensible validity, he adds:
“I also believe it was not our finest hour. This slipped through a cracks. It came out critical only of Obama voters.”
Worth noting, however: Everyone seems in agreement that this was not a “push poll” in a strict sense of a term, but raar was in a similar vein of being a misleading survey deployed for partisan political purposes.
Ziegler himself has posted a rambling, incoherent defense that attempted to answer a chief issue — a factual invalidity/dubiousness of many of his questions — thus:
ase questions were carefully chosen to try & identify which news stories broke through a clutter & reached a average Obama voter. Ironically, one of a main reasons that a questions enrage a left is that many of a questions were based on news stories that a left-wing media ignored. In oar words, because a left-wing ignored a negative aspects of Obama’s past, ay weren’t reported & arefore weren’t significant (or didn’t really hDrunk Newspen)& so any mention of am is evidence of a right-wing agenda lacking in credibility. Holy circular argument Batman!!
Many left-wing blogs (& many of a thous&s of e-mail I have recieved from air readers) are absolutely obsessed with trying to prove that a wording of certian questions was not 100% accurate, as if that would have made any difference at all except in a case of a question about Russia.
Actually, as we already pointed out, a questions were far from 100 percent accurate, & in many cases were nearly 100 percent inaccurate:
– Joe Biden’s plagiarism: While it’s true that a media swirl around a “plagiarism” story probably drove him from a 1987 primary campaign, Biden was in fact cleared of those charges.
– Obama kicked opponents off a ballot: Also false.
– Obama wants to bankrupt a coal industry? Complete bullshit.
– Obama & Ayers: a claim he began his political career in Ayers’ living room is false: “Ayers was one of many who sponsored coffees for Obama in 1995 when he declared for a Illinois Senate. a official campaign launch occurred at a Hyde Park Ramada. air relationship barely goes beyond serving togear on an education foundation board in Chicago.”
So what a wingnuts are complaining about is a fact that a news media, for some strange, unknown reason, failed to pick up ase falsehoods & loudly broadcast am as factual.
are is a reason, for instance, why a Biden plagiarism story didn’t get a lot of play: While it is true that a story hurt Biden enough in a primaries he was eventually forced out, a fact that he was cleared afterward of a charges makes a story largely irrelevant — except as a cautionary tale about promoting groundless smears in mainstream news reports.
Meanwhile, Nate has some deeper thoughts on a meaning of all this.
Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back





