JZ: "Phone numbers are chosen purely by random, ensuring that every household in the US (or wherever we are polling) have as much chance of being selected as any other. With tens of millions of adults in the US, it is still rather easy to be missed - but stay in there and maybe stay home more often. You probably have more of a chance of being called than having a visit by Ed McMahon."

How can polls be so accurate when you only ask such a small number of people?

JZ: "It's pure probability and statistics. The same theory is involved as when you take a blood test and the clinician draws only a small sample rather than draining all the blood out of your body."

What is a "margin of error"?

JZ: "The margin of sampling error means that if we do the same poll 100 times, in 95 cases out of 100, we will get the same results plus or minus a certain percentage. Generally, a sample of 400 gives you an MOE of +/-5%, 600 gets you +/-4%, 1000 gets +/-3%. We need to be sure our sampling is random and scientific. It all relates to probability and statistics. If there are a million marbles in a jar, some black and some white - how best do I determine the number of each color, short of counting every marble? If I draw 1000 out at random, chances are I will get the same numbers of each 95 times out of 100 within a margin of error of +/-3%. However, there are other sources of survey error - e.g. how questions are phrased, etc."

I've heard so many conflicting stories - is Zogby International a Republican pollster, a Democratic pollster or an Independent pollster?

JZ: "We are independent and nonpartisan. I am personally a Democrat, but the firm does a lot of work for media (like Reuters America, New York Post, St. Louis Post Dispatch, etc.) and we work for both parties."

Where do you poll for Zogby America? What regions, area codes or time zones?

JZ: "If we are polling the US, we poll from a sample drawn from all households with telephones in 48 states. We, like others, do not poll Hawaii or Alaska because of time differences and because Republican Alaska cancels out Democratic Hawaii. As well, out of a sample of 1000 likely voters there would only be a total of 1 from both states (combined)."

Can I be put on a list so that you can call me for a future poll?

JZ: "I'm sorry but our polls must be random. As soon as we "place" people in our pool of respondents we run the risk of skewing results."

I read a lot of polls and yours is so different from the others - what makes your answers so different (and accurate)?

JZ: "We poll only likely voters who are different from just all adults. In addition, we poll all day long - 9am to 9pm local time (to the region we're calling). Finally, we apply weighting for party identification to ensure that there is no built-in Democratic bias in our sampling."