Donklephant » Blog Archive » Zogby’s Curious Definition Of “Leader”

Zogby’s Curious Definition Of “Leader”

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Polls

Okay, so I just posted a poll from Zogby which showed Obama up by 16 in New Mexico. Pretty substantial lead, right?

Well, the page I linked to at Zogby in that pervious post has 5 different polls in it and the title reads, “Zogby Poll: McCain Leads in FL while Obama is Up in Key Western States: No Clear Leaders in NC or VA.”

Do note that last part…”No Clear Leaders in NC or VA.”

So the two “Key Western States” Obama is up in are New Mexico (16 points lead…as mentioned) and Colorado…but he only leads by 2 in Colorado which is well within the +/-3.6% margin of error that Zogby cites.

I’ve noted the headline and the results in this screen capture…

A bit odd, no?

Okay, so what about Virginia and North Carolina? They’re obviously really close, right?

So leading by 5 and 9 in VA and NC is considered “No Clear Leader,” but being up by 2% in Colorado is?

Not only that, the margin of errors in VA and NC are +/-2.8% and +/-2.7% respectively…almost a full 1% below that of Colorado’s.

Folks, any way you slice it, the framing of these numbers doesn’t make any sense. And I’ve read the post a couple times. There’s nothing in it that explains this discrepancy.

Does Zogby not trust his own numbers?

If you can make sense of it, do tell.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Zogby’s Curious Definition Of “Leader””

mw Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I think the only explanation is that the person who wrote the headline is different than the person who wrote the article.

And the person who wrote the headline is an idiot.

That would explain it.
Pete Abel Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I’ll cast a vote for mw’s explanation.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.