November 21, 2009
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In the Interest of Accuracy...
In light of recent misleading information that was posted online we wanted to outline a final wrap-up of the Zogby 2008 presidential polling season. During the 2008 presidential election season, we conducted a huge number of interactive and telephone polls. Our telephone polls are well-respected and have a long standing reputation for accuracy within the industry and beyond; in fact, our telephone polling goes back to 1984. But the times are changing. Eighty three percent of US households have Internet access, including 92% of likely voters--while landline telephone penetration is where it was in 1963. Keeping up with changing times, in 2004 we showcased the abilities of our interactive polling, with perfect results. In 2008 we continued our tradition of accuracy. Our last nationwide interactive poll for the 2008 presidential election season was conducted early in the season on October 4. Our interactive poll was almost identical to our telephone poll conducted just a few days after the interactive poll. We took a look at other respected polling companies that released results of telephone polls around the same time as our interactive poll. Here are the results:
|
Poll |
Date |
MOE |
Obama |
McCain |
Other/Undecided |
|
Zogby Interactive |
October 4 |
1.9 |
48 |
44 |
8 |
|
Zogby Telephone |
October 6-9 |
2.8 |
48 |
43 |
9 |
|
Gallup |
Oct. 7-9 |
1.9 |
51 |
41 |
8 |
|
Rasmussen |
Oct 5-7 |
1.8 |
51 |
45 |
4 |
|
Diageo/Hotline |
Oct. 7-9 |
3.3 |
48 |
41 |
7 |
|
ARG |
Oct. 4-6 |
2.9 |
49 |
45 |
6 |
|
Economist/YouGuv |
Oct. 4-6 |
3.1 |
46 |
43 |
9 |
|
Time |
Oct 3-6 |
3.1 |
48 |
43 |
9 |
|
Ipsos/McClatchy |
Oct 2-6 |
3.4 |
47 |
40 |
13 |
(Source: http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/08-us-pres-ge-mvo.php)
Due to significant client demand for our services leading up to the 2008 election, we chose to suspend our internal nationwide interactive polling asking the horserace question after the October 4 poll, a full 29 days before the actual election. Unfortunately, we can't therefore draw conclusions about the accuracy of this particular interactive poll with the actual results on Election Day. Regarding the interactive polling of battleground states, we are pioneers and attempting what none have done before. We are extremely confident in our Zogby Interactive panel and interactive methodology and had the guts to publish our battleground interactive polling results. It is problematic to judge our final battleground state results based on the final election polling results because we stopped polling the battleground states mid-October, again, due to client demand for our services. Our last interactive poll of ten battleground states was conducted on October 17-20. Our interactive political polling in 2004 and 2006 was very accurate, please visit our website and view the results for yourself: http://interactive.zogby.com/index.cfm
Here is a full listing of the telephone polling we completed through the election (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1633).
(8/31/2009)
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