At a Cato Institute forum on polling with Matthew Robinson, author of the new book, Mobocracy: How the Media's Obsession With Polling Twists the News, Alters Elections, and Undermines Democracy, the Washington Times reported that John Zogby, who does polling for NBC News, agreed that many polls reported by news outlets are distorted. Referring to the book, Zogby conceded: “There is a lot in there that I agree with.”
In a Washington Times story by Donald Lambro, it was reported that pollster John Zogby and polling critic Matthew Robinson debated about news media abuse of public opinion surveys for partisan purposes and were surprised to find how much they agreed.
In his book, Mr. Robinson fiercely attacks pollsters and polls as pawns of a generally liberal-leaning news media that too often panders to and distorts public opinion.
Mr. Zogby is a political pollster who has built a reputation for being very accurate in the past several elections. He said that polls conducted carefully and fairly can perform a valuable public service that opens up critical lines of communication between legislators and the people. But he also confessed that after reading Mr. Robinson's book, “there is a lot in there that I agree with.”
Their meeting at the Cato Institute's Policy Forum had all the appearances of a debate, but when it was over, Mr. Zogby had expressed nearly as many complaints about his profession as Mr. Robinson did.
Mr. Robinson criticized pollsters for too often tilting questions to elicit desired responses that fit in with the news media's political views. “There is a liberal bias in the news media and that affects the way the question is asked,” he said. For example, he cited one poll that asked whether money should be spent on tax cuts that would otherwise go for education, health care, Medicare, Social Security and national defense, which predictably, drew a strong majority against tax cuts.
Mr. Zogby agreed that tilted questions were “particularly egregious. If you are going to offer voters a choice, you have to give them a balanced choice. You cannot load up one side”.
He also embraced Mr. Robinson's opposition to overnight polls and to quick phone polls of a few hundred “adults” 18 years of age or older, which often result in an unrepresentative sampling of opinion.
Mr. Zogby said that when polling policy issues, “the only polls that matter are the ones that use likely voters,” preferably 1,000 voters or more, and not just at election time but
“all year round”.
For the complete story reported in The Washington Times, click here.
To order Matthew Robinson’s book, see the prima publishing website.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
