’)As we saw during the 2008 election, John Zogby’s polls are ridiculous. 
They’re ridiculous when they’ve shown Democrats in the lead, and ridiculous when they’ve shown Republicans in the lead. A Zogby poll is like Jim Cramer telling you to buy Bear Stearns but even less accurate. So its no wonder conservative blogs like Powerline (are they still looking for the Democrat who wrote the Schiavo memo?) and conservative newspapers like the Boston Herald are flogging a Zogby poll that’s supposedly going to show Obama at 50%. It isn’t that I don’t think the President’s numbers will fluctuate over time (though I’d go out on a limb and say he’s never going to hit the sub-25% that was the last 3 years of his predecessor), but Zogby just isn’t credible.
Right now the credible pollsters have President Obama’s approval rating at about 59%.
UPDATE: True to form, Instapundit pimps the b.s. as well.
>> The Worst Pollster in the World Strikes Again
>> John explains why the right is getting hot and bothered about Zogby:
Rasmussen and Zogby will keep telling you what you pay them to tell you, but it doesn’t reflect what is actually going on in the real world.
Zogby’s polls are like the polls on Bill O’Reilly’s site
[...] Oliver Willis, in his entertaining “Like kryptonite to stupid” blog, provides his perspective. [...]
Oh, good.
The inevitable “All polls suck – you can’t put your faith in polls” post should be just a few days away, then.
When did entry-level statistics become partisan, I wonder.
[...] Read THIS and THIS. [...]
No, you just can’t put your faith in a Zogby poll.
All polls have variance (“noise”), but Zogby’s polls have LOTS of “noise” and have been historically unreliable.
Some polls are better than others. Zogby’s polls just stink, Rasmussen polls have significant right wing bias.
THIS WEEKS POLLS FOR OBAMA’S APPROVAL RATING:
Rasmussen: 56%
Gallup: 65%
CBS News: 64%
Rasmussen: 55%
Gallup: 62%
Pollster.com’s average of multiple polls from different sources for Obama’s approval is currently: 59.1%
http://pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama.php
Zogby is what’s called an “outlier,” it’s regularly waaay outside the norm.
John Zogby, the right’s favorite son. Ask John Zeigler. We’ll see how this poll bears out in the next week when other more legitimate polls surface. Then we’ll see what your memeomrandum ‘I’ll believe anything instapudding writes’ trolls say.
[...] straight talk: As we saw during the 2008 election, John Zogby’s polls are ridiculous. They’re ridiculous [...]
steno says: “Oh, good.
The inevitable “All polls suck – you can’t put your faith in polls” post should be just a few days away, then.”
You would have a point if Oliver was touting Zogby’s polls back when they were saying he was within the MOE in Oklahoma.
There’s a lot of competition for the title “the right’s favorite son, while John Zogby certainly does his part so does pollster Scott Rasmussen. Scott Rasmussen’s polls are more subtle, Scott Rasmussen gets the answers he wants by giving the questions right wing framing. Then Rasmussen reports the answer and unless you analyzed the question it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that he had a dishonest right wing, partisan agenda.
To the left wing, only polls that sample 10-15% more democrats than repubs are legitimate. Only polls slanted to the left count. Nice logic.