|
Reported by: Evan Axelbank
Friday, Oct 31, 2008 @01:10am EDT
He's in politics. But he's not a politician, or on one of their staffs. He predicts which of them will have jobs after election day, and which ones won't.
"If you have a disease of some sort, do you go to the emergency room and say please draw all the blood from my body and find the bacteria? A sample will do, just a poke of the finger. We're poking the finger," said John Zogby.
Since almost the moment George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, Zogby's team of callers has been gauging the support this year's candidates have. They interview hundreds of people a night.
"I don't feel that we predict, I think we just point in the direction that things are likely to go, with the understanding that things can always change on Election Day," he said.
So far, Zogby has pointed in the direction of the democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Today, Zogby's poll has Obama up seven points. But gauging where voters stand has gotten more difficult, especially when you consider that in 1992, 92 million voted. This year, 135 million are expected to vote, and Zogby's polls have had to account for that.
"The question becomes, are they really honestly going to vote? I say yes."
But perhaps the biggest challenge pollsters face is the rise of cell-phone only households, which might account for one-fifth of the country. Those voters are often unreachable by pollsters, and thus, aren't included in poll results. But Zogby says it isn't as big a problem as it seems.
"We've determined up to now, no political differences between the two kinds of phone access," Zogby said.
Are the polls too powerful? Zogby says no.
"I've never seen evidence, ever, in 24 years, where someone has said, I used to believe in this, but a Zogby poll came out and said a majority didn't, I don't believe in it anymore. I would rue the day that that happened," he said.
Whether or not they respond to them, there's no question that the biggest players in the game watch his polls, constantly.
Zogby started his company in the city of Utica in the mid 1980s. Since then it has become an international organization, with the power to gauge and to influence public opinion - and it's based in a small upstate city.
"I chose to stay in my hometown, employ a few hundred people, and I can do it, and I can rule the world with this (a cell phone). I also have a laptop too,” Zogby said.
In just a few days, we'll find out if his pin pricks, taken by phone from Utica, were on the money, or off the mark.
|
Printer Friendly Version
