Obama '08?

Okie

I apologize. That was my misreading of your sentence.

Pollsters are not in the business of wanting somebody to run.

Pollsters don't have agendas? I will admit to more skepticism concerning this than you may have. Maybe they make an effort to be unbiased, some better than others, but especially in the case of questions presented to voters, I have seen a good many that are biased. How would you like a pollster to ask you, "Have you stopped beating your spouse?" If you have one of course, so the choice of answers would be Yes, No, or NA.

Pollsters are not in the Business of wanting someone to run--says Nimh.

Not even the Arab--- Zogby????

A pollster's overriding agenda is getting the numbers right - not out of any kind of idealist scruples, but because their livelihood depends on it.

The more they get it right, the more media and experts will cite them, the more they will attract publicity and clients, the more money they will make.

If they get numbers that later turn out to be drastically off-kilter, they will lose customers and money.

Money is always the bottom line.

Of course you are right - the wording of questions can skew results, and sometimes does. But fundamentally, getting skewed results is not in the pollster's business interest.

There is one blatant exception, of course: polls that are commissioned by, for example, an interest group. Again its money that counts. If its the NRA paying, or NOW, and the pollster wants to attract it as a custumer for the next poll too, it is wise to get a result that would enable NRA or NOW to do good lobby work and get publicity with. Ie a result showing that people think gun rights are really important or the right of abortion should be protected.

So beware of commissioned, topic-specific polls. But for the regular ones, whatever the pollster's personal convictions, it is not in his business interest to skew results. I doubt conviction wins out over $$ often.

Of course there's some mucking about in the margins. I saw one poll of possible Democratic contenders that was commissioned by Fox News, and they put Ted Kennedy on it - who, of course, got very high negatives. Sheer flippancy, of course, and that's the pollster catering for a political interest of the medium in question. But they can only really do that with marginal mucking about like that, because if they'd get any of their core results totally out of kilter with what the other polls are saying (or what the subsequent election result turns out to be), it hurts them directly.

If pollsters do have an overriding bias - in Holland, where there are three main polling agencies, that seems true for De Hond, at least - it's towards getting results that will be newsworthy. The more coverage for the results, the better for business, after all. Spectacular results = good; boring, predictable results = fine if you're Gallup and you're so well established that you're gonna get covered whichever way, but not so good for more minor pollsters or new kids on the block.

But overall the meme of pollsters being nothing more than political hacks in disguise, seems to be disproven by the fact that they really pretty much tend to all get roughly the same results - whether it's the Fox News or the NYTimes poll.

Look at this GIF I created through the years leading up to the 2004 elections, for example, about Bush's job approval rating. All the different pollsters are represented in the graph, as you can see. And though there's a bandwidth of variation, they really pretty much all showed the same month-on-month developments, regardless of whether they are commonly labelled liberal or conservative-leaning. There's just one or two exceptions. The Fox poll consistently had Bush's disapproval a coupla points lower than the others. But it had Clinton's disapproval a coupla points lower than the other polls too (as Thomas has pointed out a few times). AP/Ipsos and ARG (American Research Group) are the only other two exceptions - they consistently had Bush's disapproval rating higher than the others. Otherwise, the numbers are, over time, practically indistinguishable.

And its not just on Bush's approval ratings. Look at this GIF I made at the time that tracked the Bush-vs-Kerry poll ratings for all the main pollsters. Week on week, polls would vary widely with each other - but not in any systematic way. Over time, there isnt a single poll, not Fox nor Democracy Corps, that "favoured" Bush or Kerry in its results.

Psst - Zogby is Lebanese. His parents were Catholic immigrants.

No.

Uh oh. If Obama has even the tiniest hope of being competitive in today's Democratic Party, he'd be wise to toe the line (party-line) carefully. Looks like the far Left is now going after even members of the Congressional Black Caucus in their quest for "purity".



(Hint to Mr. Obama. No more lectures on religion if you know what's good for you)

Zogby's brother---


Dr. James J. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Since 1985, Dr. Zogby and AAI have led Arab American efforts to secure political empowerment in the U.S. Through voter registration, education and mobilization, AAI has moved Arab Americans into the political mainstream.

For the past three decades, Dr. Zogby has been involved in a full range of Arab American issues. A co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the late 1970s, he later co-founded and served as the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In 1982, he co-founded Save Lebanon, Inc., a private non-profit, humanitarian and non-sectarian relief organization which funds health care for Palestinian and Lebanese victims of war, and other social welfare projects in Lebanon. In 1985, Zogby founded AAI.

In 1993, following the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in Washington, he was asked by Vice President Al Gore to lead Builders for Peace, a private sector committee to promote U.S. business investment in the West Bank and Gaza. In his capacity as co-president of Builders, Zogby frequently traveled to the Middle East with delegations led by Vice President Gore and late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. In 1994, with former U.S. Congressman Mel Levine, his colleague as co-president of Builders, Zogby led a U.S. delegation to the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement in Cairo. Zogby also chaired a forum on the Palestinian economy at the Casablanca Economic Summit in 1994. After 1994, through Builders, Zogby worked with a number of US agencies to promote and support Palestinian economic development, including AID, OPIC, USTDA, and the Departments of State and Commerce.


Dr. Zogby has also been personally active in U.S. politics for many years. Most recently, Zogby was elected a co-convener of the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee (NDECC), an umbrella organization of Democratic Party leaders of European and Mediterranean descent. On September 24, 1999, the NDECC elected Dr. James Zogby as its representative to the Democratic National Committee's Executive Committee. In 2005 he was appointed as chair of the DNC's Resolutions Committee.

A lecturer and scholar on Middle East issues, U.S.-Arab relations, and the history of the Arab American community, Dr. Zogby appears frequently on television and radio. He has appeared as a regular guest on all the major network news programs. After hosting the popular "A Capital View" on the Arab Network of America for several years, he now hosts "Viewpoint with James Zogby" on Abu Dhabi Television, LinkTV, Dish Network, and DirecTV [broadcast schedule].

Since 1992, Dr. Zogby has also written a weekly column on U.S. politics for the major newspapers of the Arab world. The column, Washington Watch, is currently published in 14 Arab countries. He has authored a number of books including two recent publications, "What Ethnic Americans Really Think" and "What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs and Concerns."

Dr. Zogby has testified before U.S. House and Senate committees, has been guest speaker on a number of occasions in the Secretary's Open Forum at the U.S. Department of State, and has addressed the United Nations and other international forums. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Public Service Award from the U.S. Department of State "in recognition of outstanding contributions to national and international affairs."

Dr. Zogby is also active professionally beyond his involvement with the Arab American community. He currently serves on the national advisory board of the American Civil Liberties Union, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Additionally, he is a Senior Analyst for the polling firm Zogby International.

In 1975, Dr. Zogby received his doctorate from Temple University's Department of Religion, where he studied under the Islamic scholar Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University in 1976, and on several occasions was awarded grants for research and writing by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Defense Education Act, and the Mellon Foundation. Dr. Zogby received a Bachelor of Arts from Le Moyne College. In 1995, Le Moyne awarded Zogby an honorary doctoral of laws degree, and in 1997 named him the college's outstanding alumnus.

Dr. Zogby is married to Eileen Patricia McMahon and is the father of five children. Zogby's mother, Cecilia Ann, was a woman committed to religion, family, education, and service of others. Click here for Dr. Zogby's January 1999 reflections on the "Zogby Matriarch."

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Now, some may think that this would not cause Zogby to lean towards the Anti-Bush position but I don't!!!

Note:



CommentsI take Zogby with a grain of salt for three reasons.

1) He's clearly pulling for Kerry and against the current administration for a number of reasons that come out in in his non-presidential poll writings.

2) He wrote a highly publicized article a few months ago that the election was Kerry's to lose. (This is the first time I heard about Kerry's mythical closing capability.) He's not going to take on this embarrassment before he has to. (He did leave himself an out and can plausibly say that it was Kerry's to lose and he lost it, but that will have to come later.)




Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at September 8, 2004 04:52 AM Terrorists will vote for anyone who makes it easier to engage in terrorist activity, just as criminals will never vote for a law and order candidate. Zogby's brother is one of America's leading apologists for Muslim terror. Zogby himself is on the Saudi payroll, as his own website indicates.

Let's get back to the topic-OBAMA!!!

HomeDiariesBreaking BlueE-WireObama Closes Daou's Triangle On Electoral Strategy
by Chris Bowers, Wed Jun 28, 2006 at 01:27:18 PM EST

One of the reasons there is so much angst over what Obama said about Democrats and religion today is that, in Peter Daou's formulation, Obama's comments lend tri-partisan support (Democrats, Republicans and the media) to a narrative that Democrats are hostile toward people of faith. This tri-partisan support will result in a "closing of the triangle" against Democrats where it become conventional wisdom that Democrats are hostile to people of faith. This has been how the DLC has managed to reify ever anti-Democratic narrative it likes within the national discourse. So thanks Senator Obama, for reifying this Republican-driven talking point about Democrats. Now almost everyone will think that Democrats are hostile to people of faith. Well done. Your mentor, Joe Lieberman, would be proud.

Being someone who is preoccupied with electoral strategy, I want to focus on how this narrative is perhaps even more dangerous to progressives than the rather simple "Democrats are hostile to faith" narrative it engenders. In a national environment where both parties must focus their electoral strategy on courting the most conservative and pro-Republican voter in the country, we end up with a Congress that is only responsive to the most conservative, pro-Republican voters in the country. In the electoral strategy Obama reifies with his comments, progressive don't matter. Moderates don't matter. Swing voters don't matter. Independents and Democrats don't matter. Many Republicans don't even matter. The only people who matter are the most conservative people in the country. A Congress that is only responsive and responsible to those voters will, no matter who is in charge of Congress, end up producing the most right-wing legislation imaginable.

As an electoral strategist I respect, Tom Schaller, wrote to me in an email today:
Imagine for a second that, after the 2000 election in which his candidate finished second, the main media narrative was that Karl Rove needed to figure out a way to reach out to, say, unmarried, professional, college-educated women of color living in cities and suburbs of blue states. He'd have been laughed out of his party and DC.

Yet somehow, conversely, the prevailing narrative that people like Obama are ratifying is that if Democrats don't bow and scrape to white, evangelical, married, non-college educated white males in the south and rural communities---well, then they're tactically stupid, myopic, and out-of-touch. (And, because women, seculars, urban-surburbanites, college grads, and minorities are an increasing share of the electorate with each passing cycle, the "jessica alba vote" is at least a growth market, whereas the bubbas are a shrinking market.)

Rove loses an election, surveys the situation, and concludes that the GOP left 4 million evangelicals off the table and they need to find and mobilize them. We lose four years later and conclude that, um, we need to talk to evangelicals. In other words, they lose and turn to their base, but we lose and turn to...THEIR base! Am I losing my mind or is this about as absurdly upside-down ass-backwards as possible?
Obama has not only helped close the triangle on the notion that Democrats are hostile to religion, he has closed the triangle on who Democrats should appeal to in order to win elections. This danger of this is that in a nation where the only voters who matter to both parties are conservative evangelicals, then the only legislation we will ever get will be of the sort that appeals to conservative evangelicals. This will be the case no matter which party is in charge of Congress. Thus, closing the triangle on electoral strategy in this manner completely obliterates progressivism itself.

This is how the "all powerful conservative base" narrative after the 2004 election was not a success for Democrats. Whatever impact it had on making Republicans seem extreme (which I am sure has helped to drop their support among Independents below 30%), when this narrative is reified by Democrats it helps create a permanent conservative governing structure in America no matter which party is in charge. All of the recent media about the rise of the progressive movement, specifically in relation to the Connecticut Senate primary and the netroots, had gone a long way toward convincing Democrats and the media that in order to govern, it is necessary to pay attention to progressives. This is the sort of narrative that will help produce progressive legislation. However, when Democrats start wallowing in post-2004 Republican talking points like Obama did today, we wipe all of that good work away. We will never get progressive legislation in this country unless politicians think they have to be responsive to the progressive movement.

It is particularly frustrating and disgusting that Senator Obama, whose candidacy succeeded largely because it was supported by the nascent progressive movement in Illinois back in 2004, does not believe he has to be responsive to the people who helped put him in office in the first place. I was in Illinois during the 2004 primary when Obama was still single digits in polls. I saw the progressive movement, including the local Chicago netroots, rally behind him. I read that his strategy was to court African-Americans and white liberals. However, now he has tossed many of those progressives aside. I guess that is what happens when soon-to-be ex-Senator Lieberman becomes your mentor. Hopefully, after August 8th, Obama can start taking lessons on how to be a progressive from someone else besides Lieberman.
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OBAMA IS A FRAUD

A while ago, we had a mirror image of this discussion in one of Nimh's threads. The topic was Fox's polls, which we thought promoted a pro-Bush agenda. A look at the website "drpollkatz" illustrates why. The site has plots of Bush's approval ratings, his disapproval ratings, and his approval-disaproval spread for different pollsters. "DrPollkatz", by the way, openly admits to an anti-Bush bias. He is nevertheless reliable because his graphs are derived from the polls in a transparent and reproducible way.

Anyway, the graphs show that Fox's polls seem to err consistently on Bush friendly side, while Zogby's just as consistently err on the Bush-hostile side. At first sight, this suggests bias.

But then the owner of the site did something unusual for political partisans: he tested his hypothesis. Specifically, he produced the corresponding plot for Clinton's approval and disapproval figures. (Approval here, approval-disapproval spread here.) And low and behold: it turned out that Fox's polls now erred on the Clinton-friendly side, and Zogby erred on the Clinton hostile side. This is inconsistent with a partisan agenda in both polls, and consistent with an honest, benign, systematic deviation that doesn't depend on the president's party affiliation.

I will study your claims, Thomas, since you always seem to have the goods,but you can understand why I do not trust Zogby. To me, Zogby is just as sleazy as the Lebanese slattern-Helen Thomas!!

My personal experience with Middle Easterners, even those who have finished University, is that with them, blood is thicker than water(ethics?)

We have plenty of Lebanese students in our research groups, and my experiences with them contradict your hostility towards Arabs.

You may be right, Thomas, but tell me, what is the nationality of most of the members of Hezbollah?

Lebanese. And what is the nationality of most Branch Davidians, Montana Freemen, and KKK-members?

I think you are falling into a logical trap here: Generally, the proposition "most 'X's are 'Y's" does not follow from "most 'Y's are 'X's". Thus, just because most Montana Freemen are US citizens, it doesn't follow that most US citizens are Montana Freemen. And just because most Hesbollah members are Lebanese, it does not follow that Lebanese are Hesbollah members, or even Hesbollah sympathizers. Only the latter statement, but not the former, would justify a negative opinion of Lebanese in General.

Well, that certainly was a wasted effort. Rather than attempting to school Possum on the finer points of logic, I suggest that you spend your time more profitably -- say, for instance, by building a perpetual motion machine or bringing peace to the middle east.

Looking forward to election eve, I am.

Dems gain 24 seats in the house and 4 seats in the Senate.

This is interesting, or odd, depending.. Obama teamed up with ueberconservative Sen. Coburn from OK to plead for more transparency in a potentially powerful anti-pork spending bill:


(Source: Yahoo! News)

I'd caught a glimpse of this story earlier. The net campaign had really put pressure on the senators, and eventually unearthed the last two representatives blocking a vote on the proposal as being Robert Byrd (D - WV), who when outed promptly dropped his resistance, and Ted Stevens (R - AK). Somehow I'd just missed the fact that it was Obama who was co-sponsoring the bill.

Obama teams with someone across the aisle to push for more transparency on a spending bill. I think that's good - not odd or "interesting" in any suspicious sense.