Zogby Releases Poll, Statement on How Obama Got Elected

Yesterday quite a few Barack Obama voters--the more cognizant ones, that is--were upset to hear about the video made by John Ziegler of questions being asked of clueless Obama voters after they had come out of the voting booth.

While almost every one could answer questions about the slurs the media and other liberals made against Sarah Palin, almost none could answer correctly concerning genuine gaffes made by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They also could not answer basic facts concerning the candidates they had just voted for.

A quick summary of results from a Zogby poll which found stunning levels of ignorance on the part of Obama voters was also released.

This display of numbing ignorance was of course met with howls of disapproval and quick efforts to obfuscate and undermine credibility by liberals. In fact, the Daily Kos (the place where many liberals receive their daily talking papers) hit this one quickly and got out the standard denial-track overnight Monday night.

So it was that yesterday liberals parroted the "push polling, push polling" mantra fed to them by the Daily Kos.

It didn't matter how many times you explained to them why this the video and the Zogby poll were not push polling (primarily that it was done after the election where it could not do what push polls are designed to do: push the voter toward voting for a particular candidate based on negative information or insinuation). These liberals had been fed the "push polling" line, that was all they had, and they were going to use it like brave little soldiers.

Perhaps they'll believe Zogby International itself (there I go, getting optimistic again). John Zogby of Zogby International is himself a Democrat, so there are no reasonable (notice I said "reasonable") grounds for charges of Right-wing bias here).

Zogby has not only released the full results of the poll, but has also placed a statement on their website specifically to answer these mindless charges of "push polling."

Zogby says

"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby

Here are some of the results of the poll:

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

As I told one persistent liberal yesterday, even if it had been a push poll, that does not alter the most important aspects of the exercise: that these facts about Barack Obama and Joe Biden were true, and that Obama voters were utterly clueless about the facts.

I admitted up front yesterday that not all Obama voters are clueless. Many are sincere, dedicated socialists who knew exactly the kind of un-American candidate they were supporting (un-American in that Obama espouses values antithetical to Americanism and how America was designed to work).

But a large number of average Obama voters--as evidenced by this video and the Zogby poll--simply knew very little about the candidates. They had swallowed the propaganda fed them by the "mainstream" media. As evidenced by the video, that propaganda said that John McCain was a mean old guy, Sarah Palin was a mean idiot, and that there was nothing negative about Obama or Biden.

First and foremost, it is every person's responsibility to educate and inform themselves. Our right to vote is a sacred and very important thing; it should not be exercised indiscriminately and without good information.

But our journalistic corps' job is to provide objective facts, not spin and propaganda which favors the candidate they favor (and polls also show that the "mainstream" media overwhelmingly supported Obama and other Democrats). Our media bills itself as being "unbiased" an "objective." Those things are essential to the health of a representative democracy.

But we do not have "truth in advertising" from our "mainstream" media. We have snake oil. And the deleterious of that poison the media sells was evidenced in this video.

I strongly suspect that on election day, ignorance carried the day.