Pollster says election could end in landslide

[Denny Crane]

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20080925/NEWS01/80925009/1002/NEWS

[FONT=arial, helvetica][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Pollster says election could end in landslide[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]
Jill Terreri
Staff writer [/FONT] [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]The presidential election might be a tight race now, but one of the country’s top pollsters thinks the race will end in an electoral landslide.

John Zogby, president of Zogby International, told a group of businesspeople today that it’s up to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to convince voters to go with him. If he’s not successful, the country will likely vote for “a comfortable old shoe”, that being Republican Sen. John McCain.

Despite the books Obama has written, Americans are still asking, “Who are you, where are you from?,” Zogby said.

Zogby spoke at the College at Brockport’s Business Briefings breakfast series at the college’s MetroCenter campus on St. Paul Street. He was promoting his new book, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report of the Transformation of the American Dream. [/FONT]

 

[Denny Crane]

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1562

Released: September 25, 2008

Zogby Poll: McCain Recovers as Contest Takes Dramatic Turns; McCain 46% - Obama 44%

First presidential debate still up in the air as campaigns shuffle schedules

UTICA, New York - Republican John McCain's poll numbers improved slightly as he suspended his campaign Wednesday to head back to Washington to focus on the looming national financial crisis, moving from more than three points behind Barack Obama last weekend to two points ahead in a Zogby Interactive survey just out of the field this morning.

<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="375"> <tbody><tr> <td>

[SIZE=+1]Data from this poll is available here​

http://www.zogby.com/salespage/2008tracking.cfm​

[SIZE=+1] [/SIZE]</td> </tr> </tbody></table> [/SIZE]​

What is still unknown is what will happen to the first presidential debate in Mississippi, which had been set for Friday evening but which has been put on hold by the McCain campaign. The sponsor of the debate and the Obama campaign insist the debate will go on.

Both surveys of likely voters nationwide were conducted using Zogby's online polling technology, which has proven accurate in national and statewide races dating back to 2004.

McCain now leads Obama, 45.8% to 43.8%, the survey shows.
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td width="139">

The Horserace​

</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

Sept. 23/25​

</td> <td width="108">

Sept. 19/20​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> Obama
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

43.8%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

46.8%​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> McCain
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

45.8%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

43.4%​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> Not sure/Other
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

10.4%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

8.8%​

</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
The big shift in the race appears to have come among independent voters, where McCain now leads by nine points, 43% to 34%. In the survey conducted over the weekend, Obama led by one point among independents.

Both candidates have a sturdy grip on their political bases, the survey shows. McCain and Obama each win 88% support from voters in their respective political parties.

Among men, McCain leads by a 53% to 35% margin, up 15 points from the weekend survey. Among women, Obama leads by a 52% to 39% margin, up 5 points from the weekend survey.

The survey, half conducted before McCain's announcement Wednesday that he would suspend his campaign to concentrate on the financial crisis and half conducted after the announcement, shows movement in McCain's favor after his announcement. Before the announcement - which included about half of the total polling sample - Obama led by one point. But McCain led by 5 points in polling completed after his statement about the suspension of his campaign. Overall, the interactive survey, conducted Sept. 23-25, 2008, included 4,752 likely voters nationwide and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.5 percentage points.

Pollster John Zogby: "The financial crisis appears to have trumped the campaign at least for now, but what remains true is that this race is really very close. Obama was clearly leading before - we had him up by three points over the weekend - but I never thought his lead was as high as nine points, as at least one poll had indicated. We are careful to weight our poll samples to reflect the proper proportion of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. And of course, we always sample likely voters, not registered voters, to most closely reflect what would happen in an election."

Zogby International was the most accurate pollster in every one of the last three presidential election cycles, and continues to perfect its telephone and interactive methodologies using its own live operator, in-house call center in Upstate New York, and its own secure servers for its online polling projects.

In the 2004 presidential election, not only was Zogby's telephone polling right on the money, its interactive polling also nailed the election as well. In 2006, the Zogby Interactive online polling was on the money in 17 of 18 U.S. Senate races (the 18^th was within the margin of error) a record of accuracy that is unmatched in the industry - as no other leading firm even attempts to poll statewide political races using an interactive methodology for public consumption.

For a complete methodological statement on this survey, please visit:
http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1336

 

[huevonkiller]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

 

[Denny Crane]

I hope I don't have to post this too often.

RCP is bogus. It includes outlier polls that are ridiculous.

 

[huevonkiller]

Didn't know Rasmussen had fallen that far. :O

:[

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...ial_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

 

[Denny Crane]

This zogby poll is from today, and includes 1/2 of the calls after McCain's suspension of his campaign.

But I think all the daily poll watching is missing the point.

McCain now leads Obama, 45.8% to 43.8%, the survey shows.
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td width="139">

The Horserace​

</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

Sept. 23/25​

</td> <td width="108">

Sept. 19/20​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> Obama
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

43.8%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

46.8%​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> McCain
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

45.8%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

43.4%​

</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="139"> Not sure/Other
</td> <td valign="top" width="96">

10.4%​

</td> <td valign="top" width="108">

8.8%​

</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
Obama lost 3%, and Not sure gained 2.6%.

What Zogby was talking about in the first article is that Obama is unable to seal the deal and put the race away. Instead, he's leaving people truly undecided and at the last minute (in the booth), they'll vote for McCain.

The race factor and the Hillary factor are at play, too. Some % are lying to the pollsters and won't vote Obama because of his race. Sucks, but it's true. And there's 20% of Hillary's voters, or as many as 6M votes headed to the McCain column in Nov.

 

[CelticKing]

I like what I see in this thread.

 

[CelticKing]

Also zog means bird in my language. (just to get it out there)

 

[Minstrel]

I hope I don't have to post this too often.

RCP is bogus. It includes outlier polls that are ridiculous.

Outlier polls are part of the data, assuming the method is at all rigorous. There's no statistical validity to simply throwing out certain polls that you don't like or don't think show reality. Polls don't show "reality," they show a snapshot of moods, and that's best gauged through the averaging of all the data.

Fivethirtyeight.com and electoral-vote.com both have Obama with significant leads in the electoral college based on the latest state polls. Two weeks ago, both had McCain in the lead, but polls swung big for Obama last week (which pretty much everyone agrees on, not just a few "liberal" polls).

 

[huevonkiller]

Landslide is a ridiculous adjective though.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Look at Zogby's map though.

He has 234 in the Obama category, with Pennsylvania and New Mexico as tossups, both of which looks pretty safe Obama. So on his own map, he has Obama basically with that 260 EV's, with Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia as toss up.

Obama just needs NV+NH, or any of the other states to get to 269 (at which point it would be decided in his favor in the house).

 

[Denny Crane]

Outlier polls are part of the data, assuming the method is at all rigorous. There's no statistical validity to simply throwing out certain polls that you don't like or don't think show reality. Polls don't show "reality," they show a snapshot of moods, and that's best gauged through the averaging of all the data.

Fivethirtyeight.com and electoral-vote.com both have Obama with significant leads in the electoral college based on the latest state polls. Two weeks ago, both had McCain in the lead, but polls swung big for Obama last week (which pretty much everyone agrees on, not just a few "liberal" polls).

I would wake up and pay attention when a highly regarded and accurate pollster who's a Democrat (Zogby) comes out and says what he did. He's not looking at the trivial swing back/forth - as you said, McCain up last week.

When you have 10 polls and 9 are within +/- 2 and the other is +15, then the +15 really looks out of whack, don't you agree? When you average the 9 and get EVEN, but average in that +15 and get one up by +2.5, then it makes RCP bogus.

 

[Denny Crane]

Landslide is a ridiculous adjective though.

You think a professional pollster would throw that word around lightly?

Nobody would take him seriously if he misused the basic words of electioneering.

 

[Minstrel]

I would wake up and pay attention when a highly regarded and accurate pollster who's a Democrat (Zogby) comes out and says what he did. He's not looking at the trivial swing back/forth - as you said, McCain up last week.

He's not unique in that. Almost no major statistical models are affected by the trivial back and forth. Fivethirtyeight.com lagged behind the mounting state polls coming out big in favour of Obama because the model wants to see steady change to change its own forecast...exactly to avoid "trivial swings" back and forth.

When you have 10 polls and 9 are within +/- 2 and the other is +15, then the +15 really looks out of whack, don't you agree? When you average the 9 and get EVEN, but average in that +15 and get one up by +2.5, then it makes RCP bogus.

Not at all. Even single polls that are surely wrong contain useful information for modeling. If one candidate is actually ahead, one would expect some outliers that show him WAY ahead. Think of a locus of points around the "real position"...if someone is up 5, the high point of that spread could be +15. Whereas if the candidate is down 5, his high point might be +5. You want as much data in the "data cloud"...the bigger the data cloud (as long as it is real information), the more confident that the center of the cloud is "true."

 

[Денг Гордон]

I still don't see why you regard Zogby so highly.

During the primaries, you have:

SurveyUSA's pollster report cards:

1. Market Shares
2. ABC News
2. Scroth and Associates
2. Behavioral Research CTR
5. Selzer and Co
6. Fox News
6. Field Poll
6. Greenberg Quinlan
9. SurveyUSA
10. Franklin Pierce
10. Monmouth
12. Gallup
13. Research 2000
14. Quniipiac
....
17. Strategic Vision
....
21. Rasmussen
22. Zogby
23. ARG
24. Insider Advantage
25. Public Pollicy Polling

Then using Five Thirty Eight's report card (which weights states in difficulty to direct, so states who avoided tough contests to poll don't get extra credit).

1. Selzer and Co
2. SurveyUSA
3. Rasmussen
4. U of NH
5. Market Shares
6. Field Poll
7. Mason-Dixon
8. Research 200
9. Quinnipiac
...
12. Public Policy Polling
13. Strategic Vision
14. Insider Advantage
....
16. ABC / Washington Post
17. Zogby
..
20. Suffolk
21. CNN / Opinion Research
22. LA Times / Bloomberg
23. ARG
24. Fox News
25. Gallup
...
31. Zogby Interactive

 

[Denny Crane]

He's not unique in that. Almost no major statistical models are affected by the trivial back and forth. Fivethirtyeight.come lagged behind the mounting state polls coming out big in favour of Obama because the model wants to see steady change to change its own forecast...exactly to avoid "trivial swings" back and forth.



Not at all. Even single polls that are surely wrong contain useful information for modeling. If one candidate is actually ahead, one would expect some outliers that show him WAY ahead. Think of a locus of points around the "real position"...if someone is up 5, the high point of that spread could be +15. Whereas if the candidate is down 5, his high point might be +5. You want as much data in the "data cloud"...the bigger the data cloud (as long as it is real information), the more confident that the center of the cloud is "true."

The outliers may be useful if you watch the trend in a single one of those polls over time.

There's virtually no information in the outlier if 9 polls have McCain up 10 and one has Obama up 15. Or vice versa.

 

[mook]

Look at Zogby's map though.

He has 234 in the Obama category, with Pennsylvania and New Mexico as tossups, both of which looks pretty safe Obama. So on his own map, he has Obama basically with that 260 EV's, with Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia as toss up.

Obama just needs NV+NH, or any of the other states to get to 269 (at which point it would be decided in his favor in the house).

Well, Zogby has Pennsylvania as leaning toward McCain by 6%.

Still, though, he credits Obama with 234 electoral votes, which means Obama needs just 35 more votes. In all the "purple" states, right now Zogby says Obama loses ever one but North Carolina (15 votes) and New Mexico (5), and Indiana "too close to call" (11).

Pretend that there's absolutely no margin of error, by Zogby's numbers it seems like it comes down to Indiana, or 11 electoral votes. Hardly a "blowout."

But then a lot of people are saying 3% of people will change their vote in the privacy of the booth just because Obama is black. So he needs a big margin if he has any hope to win. But people also said the "cell phone vote" would be huge in 2004 for Kerry and it didn't emerge.

*Shrug*

This is the very first time I've really looked at any poll in any detail, and now I remember why. So much can change day-to-day, week-to-week. Who knows what to really think.

If I were a Republican and I was excited to see Sarah Palin with her finger so close to the nuclear button, I guess I'd be happy to read the article. I just don't know that I'd really believe it.

 

[Denny Crane]

Mook,

I think Zogby is looking at everything with the lens he has as an experienced pollster. I'm not going to say it's his gut that causes him to talk about a landslide, but it's not likely today's poll, or last week's. Everything taken as a whole, including trends and expectations.

 

[Minstrel]

The outliers may be useful if you watch the trend in a single one of those polls over time.

The outliers are useful only in combination with multiple polls. A single outlier poll, taken alone, tells you nothing at all. A bunch of polls, the outliers are useful information. Someone who "really is" way down, won't get an outlier showing him way up. So an outlier showing someone way up gives you an indication that the candidate isn't way down. As an example. But this is only true if taken in combination with other data. Statistical method never throws out data, unless it's simply fraudulent or the method of acquiring it was invalid.

 

[Minstrel]

Mook,

I think Zogby is looking at everything with the lens he has as an experienced pollster. I'm not going to say it's his gut that causes him to talk about a landslide, but it's not likely today's poll, or last week's. Everything taken as a whole, including trends and expectations.

Pattern matching by an expert is an interesting human capability, but I certainly wouldn't trust it when it comes to enormous amount of data. Humans aren't wired to process huge amounts of data well.

Zogby's opinion is interesting, but not much moreso than any pundit who has a lot of experience. If he's not using his own statistical results, then he's talking as a pundit, not as a statistical analyst.

 

[mook]

Mook,

I think Zogby is looking at everything with the lens he has as an experienced pollster. I'm not going to say it's his gut that causes him to talk about a landslide, but it's not likely today's poll, or last week's. Everything taken as a whole, including trends and expectations.

His own electoral map projection doesn't support his findings of a landslide, but his experience from making lots of similar electoral map projections in the past does. Huh.

If he really sees the trending of the data heading toward McCain in so many states he lists as "blue," why list them as blue? Why not make a bunch more of them purple?

*shrug again* Meh, I guess we'll see if he's right in a little over a month.

 

[mook]

I still don't see why you regard Zogby so highly.

During the primaries, you have:

SurveyUSA's pollster report cards:

1. Market Shares
2. ABC News
2. Scroth and Associates
2. Behavioral Research CTR
5. Selzer and Co
6. Fox News
6. Field Poll
6. Greenberg Quinlan
9. SurveyUSA
10. Franklin Pierce
10. Monmouth
12. Gallup
13. Research 2000
14. Quniipiac
....
17. Strategic Vision
....
21. Rasmussen
22. Zogby
23. ARG
24. Insider Advantage
25. Public Pollicy Polling

Then using Five Thirty Eight's report card (which weights states in difficulty to direct, so states who avoided tough contests to poll don't get extra credit).

1. Selzer and Co
2. SurveyUSA
3. Rasmussen
4. U of NH
5. Market Shares
6. Field Poll
7. Mason-Dixon
8. Research 200
9. Quinnipiac
...
12. Public Policy Polling
13. Strategic Vision
14. Insider Advantage
....
16. ABC / Washington Post
17. Zogby
..
20. Suffolk
21. CNN / Opinion Research
22. LA Times / Bloomberg
23. ARG
24. Fox News
25. Gallup
...
31. Zogby Interactive

Can you post a link for this? I don't doubt you are telling the truth. I'm just kind of curious to learn more about this.

 

[maxiep]

What I've heard from a couple of pollsters--one being interviewed on NPR the other on Bloomberg--is that Obama needs to be at 50% or at worst 48% in the swing states he wants to win. If he's below 48% he'll lose even if McCain is around 44%-46% because the independents are going to swing to McCain overwhelmingly. I was surprised to hear the same analysis from two different pollsters on two different shows.

 

[mook]

What I've heard from a couple of pollsters--one being interviewed on NPR the other on Bloomberg--is that Obama needs to be at 50% or at worst 48% in the swing states he wants to win. If he's below 48% he'll lose even if McCain is around 44%-46% because the independents are going to swing to McCain overwhelmingly. I was surprised to hear the same analysis from two different pollsters on two different shows.

I've heard that too, but I do wonder if there's something of an echo chamber effect. One pollster hears another pollster say that, it sounds safe, so he says it too and pretty soon it's a unanimous opinion?

I mean, is there really any way to look into the heart of somebody you're polling to calculate how likely racism will play into their vote for US President when you are left all alone at the ballot?

Especially when sexism and ageism (and Bidenism!) also all probably have some play too?

I dunno. I've heard it so many times that I've come to accept the "3% black buffer rule" (just made that up). But I also really bought in to the "all these polls are under-reporting young cell phone users" line that everyone echoed last time.

Hell, maybe he needs a 6% buffer. In which case he's probably fucked.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Can you post a link for this? I don't doubt you are telling the truth. I'm just kind of curious to learn more about this.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/pollster ratings

The list I posted from surveyusa is from February though, because I followed a link off 538. Still, Zogby has the same rank in the updated one regardless.

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/...-2008-contests-mean-avg-error-through-050608/

 

[mook]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/pollster ratings

The list I posted from surveyusa is from February though, because I followed a link off 538. Still, Zogby has the same rank in the updated one regardless.

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/...-2008-contests-mean-avg-error-through-050608/

gracias!

dammit. I promised myself I wouldn't pay attention to polls until the last week, and I've been sucked in.

 

[Denny Crane]

Pat Cadell, a former Democratic Party pollster, was on Fox tonight, and his take is the same as Zogby's. He talked about the structure of the electorate and campaigns.

He also said Obama is absolutely not handling the banking finance issue well at all. A big part of the structure he talked about is that McCain is seen as a "doer not a talker" while Obama is seen as a "talker not a doer." Pretty fair way to put it, if you put partisanship aside. In his words, Obama basically told congress and the president that he could easily be reached by phone if he was needed - not a good message.

It is 20+ years later, but I'll go back to my Harold Washington story. In Chicago, he defeated the current Mayor Daley and current Mayor Jane Byrne for the Democratic nomination in the primaries (in a close 3-way race). In a city that elects democrats as mayors with 70% of the vote, Washington got just 52% of the vote against a nobody/cannon-fodder candidate named Bernard Epton. To my knowledge, Epton was a lawyer in some downtown law firm with no experience and hasn't run since.

Mook - if you take into consideration that 18% kind of swing in a modern Northern City (Obama's home town even), and 25 years of progress (hey, we do have a black man nominated with a real chance to win!), maybe your 6% or 3% figures are about right. It sucks; I don't think his race should be a consideration at all.

What should be a consideration is that he's basically the same candidate as John Kerry with better ability to read from the teleprompter and a wonderful speaking voice. Kerry's policies hardly wowed anyone.

 

[Денг Гордон]

I've heard that too, but I do wonder if there's something of an echo chamber effect. One pollster hears another pollster say that, it sounds safe, so he says it too and pretty soon it's a unanimous opinion?

I mean, is there really any way to look into the heart of somebody you're polling to calculate how likely racism will play into their vote for US President when you are left all alone at the ballot?

Especially when sexism and ageism (and Bidenism!) also all probably have some play too?

I dunno. I've heard it so many times that I've come to accept the "3% black buffer rule" (just made that up). But I also really bought in to the "all these polls are under-reporting young cell phone users" line that everyone echoed last time.

Hell, maybe he needs a 6% buffer. In which case he's probably fucked.

I might have to come out with my own electoral map this weekend on the PE board. I did pretty well in the primaries.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Here is how Nate Silver said the undecided votes are likely to break:

Percent of Undecided Votes Allocated to Barack Obama
DC 64.4%
MS 64.4%
GA 63.0%
MD 61.5%
SC 61.1%
AL 60.9%
NC 58.0%
VA 57.8%
IN 57.8%
IA 56.9%
AR 56.8%
OK 56.5%
WI 56.5%
DE 53.7%
AK 53.4%
WA 52.7%
FL 52.4%
TN 52.3%
CO 51.8%
MO 51.6%
MI 51.5%
KS 51.4%
OR 51.0%
LA 50.7%
UT 50.6%
HI 50.5%
MN 50.2%
NE 49.8%
TX 48.3%
IL 48.3%
MT 48.0%
OH 47.2%
NV 46.7%
WY 46.6%
SD 46.4%
AZ 46.0%
ND 45.5%
ID 45.4%
NJ 45.0%
PA 44.8%
CT 44.6%
NY 44.6%
VT 43.7%
KY 43.4%
CA 42.9%
ME 42.6%
NH 42.2%
MA 41.0%
NM 40.0%
WV 38.6%
RI 35.0%

He also had a recent post on the Bradley Effect

Sean Oxendine at The Next Right purports to find evidence of a Bradley Effect in the Democratic primaries, something which I also looked for and did not find. The difference between my study and his is that I include all the states, whereas he excludes those which do not fit his argument.

Oxendine initially posts data from a large group of states, but then excludes those from what he calls the "Old Confederacy". The concept, however, is inconsistently applied. Texas (where Obama underperformed slightly) remains in his dataset. But also, the particular geographics of the Confederacy are not especially relevant electorally. Kentucky (where Obama underperformed) does not meet Oxendine's definition whereas Tennessee (where Obama overperformed) does, although the states are two peas in a pod demographically. Oxendine also excludes Iowa, where Obama significantly overperformed. True, Iowa was a caucus, and there is a reasonable argument for exlcuding it (likewise with Nevada, which he also excludes), but if you're trying to hypothesis-test, you ought to go with the more roubst and inclusive standard if you're hoping to affirm a positive finding.

In the 20 states that he does choose to include, Oxendine reports that Obama underperformed his polling margin by 2 points. This, by the way, is not a statistically signficant figure at either the 90th or the 95th percentile thresholds. Also, I actually get a different result when looking at that same set of states ... using the Pollster.com estimates rather than the RCP averages, as I did for my study, I found that Obama underperformed by 0.2 points rather than 2.0. Whether the Pollster.com or the RCP averages are superior is something we can take up at another time, but Oxendine's is not a very robust fidning if simply switching up the averaging mechanism that we use removes the positive finding entirely.

The other, more important question is why we should simply dismiss the results in the South, where Obama significantly overperformed his numbers, by 7.2 points on average, according to my definition of the region and by 9.9 points according to his -- numbers of a far greater magnitude than the Bradley Effect that he purports to find. Suppose that we conclude from this dataset that there was some sort of Bradley Effect outside of the South. We would also have to conclude, that within the South, there may be some sort of reverse Bradley Effect, perhaps resulting from black voters telling interviewers they are undecided when they really aren't. If Obama underperforms by, say, a point in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but overperforms by 2-3 points in Virginia, Florida and North Carolina, it's not clear that this is a harmful trade for him.

So to summarize, Oxendine:

1. Cherry-picks states for his analysis;
2. Touts a finding that is not remotely statistically significant anyway;
3. Touts a finding that would entirely disappear if you used a different poll averaging mechanism, and,
4. Ignores, even if you excuse all of the above and take his claims at face value, the presence of an apparent reverse Bradley Effect that would benefit Obama in three highly electorally significant states.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/bad-math-and-bradley-effect.html

 

[Denny Crane]

Pattern matching by an expert is an interesting human capability, but I certainly wouldn't trust it when it comes to enormous amount of data. Humans aren't wired to process huge amounts of data well.

Zogby's opinion is interesting, but not much moreso than any pundit who has a lot of experience. If he's not using his own statistical results, then he's talking as a pundit, not as a statistical analyst.

I think he's using poll data that's a combination of what he sells and we don't see, and questions other than "who would you vote for?"