John Zogby Statement on Political Message Testing
There have been attacks in recent blog posts concerning survey questions Zogby International asked on behalf of a client. The client is Newsmax, a well-known conservative magazine. The questions were legitimately worded message tests to accurately determine voter sentiment concerning charges leveled against Sen. Barack Obama. Understand that we at Zogby International conduct a lot of similar research for left, right and center interests and fairly believe that our data is part of a broader process that serves to illuminate real voter sentiment-warts and all. In many instances over the years, voters have strongly disagreed with the interests of our clients and at other times they have agreed-this is what good research is all about. Our process provides a much more beneficial role to the public discourse than the one-dimensional, adolescent rantings of many blogs, both left and right. (10/16/2008)