John Zogby

John Zogby (born 1948) is a noted Lebanese American political pollster and first senior fellow at The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute. He is the founder and current President/CEO of Zogby International, a polling firm known for both phone polling and interactive, Internet-based polling.

Background

Zogby grew up in Utica, New York, the son of Lebanese Catholic immigrants. His brother is James "Jim" Zogby, founder of the influential Arab American Institute. Jim Zogby is also employed part-time by Zogby polling.

Zogby is a graduate of Le Moyne College and Syracuse University. He has taught history and political science at the State University of New York, Utica College, and at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton College. A trustee of Le Moyne College, Zogby received the Alumni Award in June 2000.

Zogby has three sons with his wife, Kathleen, a retired special education teacher. His interests include golf, basketball, and soccer coaching.

Career

Zogby founded the polling firm Zogby International in 1984. Since then, he has conducted polls around the world, though he has gained the most notoriety for his polls of United States Presidential elections.

He first gained attention in the 1996 Presidential election when his final poll came within a tenth of a point of the actual result. Zogby also correctly predicted the cliffhanger result of the 2000 presidential election won narrowly by George W. Bush, in contrast to most other pollsters who had expected Bush to win easily.

In 2004, however, his predictions failed to materialize. Before polls had even closed in the 2004 presidential election, Zogby predicted a comfortable win for John Kerry (311 electoral votes, versus 213 for Bush, with 14 too close to call), saying that "Bush had this election lost a long time ago," adding that voters wanted a change and would vote for "any candidate who was not Bush." While admitting that he was mistaken, Zogby did not admit any possible flaws in his poll methods, insisting that his predictions were all "within the margin of error." While on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, he said he felt that Kerry would win due to the undecided voters. Despite his personal prediction, Zogby's final poll showed Bush with a one point lead over Kerry, making him one of the 'winners' among pollsters according to the New York Post and Boston Globe.[1] Zogby later released a "mea culpa" in which he stated "I will do better next time: I will just poll, not predict." [2]

In 2006, Zogby phone polling correctly called all 10 competitive United States Senate races and nailed the exact margin in the three closest races. His interactive online polling correctly called the winner of 17 of 18 races, but was far off in the margin of victory of some races. [3]

Prior to the January, 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary, Zogby, like virtually all other pollsters, predicted a large (13 points, in Zogby's case) victory for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, adding, "Obama is still on a roll and not slowing down. He had another big day." Clinton went on to win by three percentage points. Zogby's predictions in the Iowa Caucus, and the South Carolina, and Florida primaries, however, were far closer, and he was one of only a few pollsters to correctly call Obama's Iowa win. However, his final poll in California showed Obama winning by 13%, but the actual results showed Hillary winning by 10%, which is beyond the margin of error.

Zogby has also had success with elections in countries outside the United States. He correctly called the 2001 Israeli election for Ariel Sharon, the 2000 Mexican election for Vicente Fox and again in Mexico with the victory of Felipe Calderón in 2006. Also, Zogby has made a sideline of polling Arab attitudes toward the United States, particularly in regard to Lebanon.

Other activities

Best known as an interpreter of the political scene, Zogby had a brief stint as an aspiring politician himself in 1981, when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Utica, New York. He describes himself personally as a Democrat, while his polling firm is "independent and nonpartisan". [4]

Since May 2005, he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.

Zogby currently co-hosts a weekly one-hour show, “The Pulse of the Nation,” which debuted on Nova M Radio in April 2007. [5] He also hosts a weekly show called “Zogby’s Real America,” which debuted on XM Satellite Radio's POTUS channel in September 2007. [6]

Mr. Zogby is also a Senior Advisor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and serves as the first-ever Senior Fellow of the The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute in Washington, D.C.

External links

• Zogby website