More on Zogby, Supidity

Rick Shenkman, author of Just How Stupid Are We?, comments on the now infamous Zogby poll showing Obama supporters to be, er, um, stupid. The poll won gobs of coverage out there in netland, particularly among conservatives who love seeing Obama voters unable to answer the simplest of questions and among liberals who challenge the nature of the survey, its methodology, and how bad it makes them feel.

The guy who sponsored the poll, John Zeigler, has made a cottage industry out of anti-Obama screeds and the How Obama Got Elected documentary.

Not Push, but a Poll

Good column on the now infamous (at least among polling types) Zogby survey (conducted for a guy named John Ziegler) of Obama supporters finding them to be less than informed. I've blogged about it earlier in the week, so I'm not going to repeat the whole sordid story. The crux of the argument is this: are the "knowledge" questions really knowledge questions? Are they misleading? Debatable?

Probably. Perhaps. But if there's a doubt, then the questions aren't really tapping knowledge so much as underlying partisan preferences and misunderstanding of the news. When you select a handful of people and ask, at best, leading knowledge questions, you would expect this kind of result.

Interestingly, Zogby says the poll will not be conducted again, this time using McCain supporters. An interview with Ziegler, full of profanity, tells you all you probably need to know about the guy and his intentions in the survey.

I agree this was not a push poll, but it was also less a test of political knowledge and more a case of partisan hackery posing as a test of political knowledge.

Electing Obama

A weird little polling tempest is at play based on a survey with results critical of those who voted for Barack Obama. The Zogby International site includes details of a survey and a defense of its questions as not being a push poll.

Lemme lay it out. You got this guy doing a documentary that essentially argues that journalists fawning over Obama practiced "media malpractice" and elected him. Here's a quote from our budding documentarian, John Ziegler:

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

And the weird part is a defense on the same page by the Zogby folks swearing this was not a push poll designed to influence opinion rather than merely measure it.



The results of the poll make Obama supporters seem, well, less than informed. Well, not exactly. A bunch of them knew about all the bad stuff on Palin or McCain but curiously were unable to answer similar questions about Obama and Biden.

A pdf of the questionnaire and marginals is here. I'll revisit this tomorrow in more detail after I get through meetings and can sit down, think it through.