But I stress – except for the last one – Zogby’s interactive polls have tended to favor Obama more than his telephone polls.

Allan Loudell

There are two Zogby polls. The ones in the primaries that you refer to were not interactive online polls. They were the standard phone call polls. The one showing McCain up is an online poll, which are universally thought to be crap. Indeed, our online polls here at DL probably are just as trustworthy.

At the risk of wading into this controversy, have you all forgotten that Zogby’s polls tended to FAVOR Obama during the primaries and caucuses, compared to other polls, and Zogby often beat the others?

The one time Zogby blew it big was California, where he projected Obama doing much better.

Zogby nailed the outcome in North Carolina.

The point is—I find it interesting if a pollster whose methodology tended to favor Obama during the Primary/Caucus season then produces a poll where the race is razor-thin and/or McCain is actually ahead.

I agree the Interactive polls shouldn’t be taken as seriously as the regular telephone polls, but , Zogby does try to take demographic data into account when ‘weighting’ the numbers, as I understand it. (I’ll have to check on this again!)

But the point is… the Interactive polls have often favored Obama more than the telephone polls by a whisker, and my theory is that simply reflects that Obama supporters – in general – are more technologically savvy. When I brought that up to Zogby the other day, he couldn’t disagree.

I DO go to Zogby more often for the above reasons, plus I know him better – met him in Wilmington some years ago – and I do have full permission to reproduce on my blog as much as I want.

This doesn’t mean I discount the other pollsters. Quite to the contrary. I just posted on my blog the latest CBS News poll AND the latest Gallup daily tracking poll. I generally see day-to-day tracking polls as the most unreliable, but – of course – you can get trends.

And in this case, it IS psychologically significant that Senator Obama met the 50 percent threshold for the first time in the Gallup daily tracking poll.

With an uptick from 49 to 50 percent, that IS statistically insignificant, but still carries that psychological landmark, as I noted above.

Lest we forget, Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976 with 50.1 %… the last time the Democrats won a majority!

Allan Loudell
WDEL Radio & http://www.wdel.com

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

BTW, I would have pointed out (and still will) if McCain hits 50%… if I can type through the tears.

I think he should use the DELib poll instead.

Loudell needs to get his head out of his ass. He keeps quoting the partisan ZOGBY poll numbers as if they are real.