John Zogby Can Go Sit on a Poll

The pollster who gave us the '04 presidental polling data from the planet Bizzaro recently released a poll which the news show biz was quick to trumpet as some sort of evidence that American soldiers are demoralised and need to be withdrawn immediately.

If you've not read my previous entries on the subject of opinion polling, now is the time for some background reading: Part I, Part II and Part III.

Hugh Hewitt had John-of-a-hundred-evasions on his program when that story was in the headlines. Here is the transcript and audio. When you read that you should be thinking "proprietary data reduction" and "who is the customer?" When the customer is an America-must-lose individual or organisation and Zogby is the keeper of the secret data reduction method we have every reason to be very very very skeptical. Hugh tries to shine light on this, but doesn't get past square one. JZ's evasiveness only compounds my suspicion that this is yet another of his Bizzaro-world data sets.

Pollsters have to please their customers. That much I believe we can confidently say Zogby understands. I suggest that he also approaches this sort of fraud with enthusiasm.