Zogby's Flawed Poll

By now you have certainly heard about a Zogby poll conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, which found 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year.

Hugh Hewitt tried to interview John Zogby about the poll, but Zogby hung up on Hewitt after objecting to Hewitt's questions:

Among the questions: Did he travel to Iraq to oversee the polling? (No.) Would he tell me who had overseen the polling? (Information International of Beirut.) Would he tell me who at Information International? (No.) What did he pay the survey takers? (He wouldn't say). Had he been invited by the someone in the American military to brief on results? (Yes.) Who was that? (He wouldn't say.)

Why hadn't he released the demographics? (He had, he said. I disagreed. He hung up.)

Hewitt doesn't think much of the poll or Zogby:

The "poll" is quite obviously crap when one sees the questions, and Zogby's refusal to answer basic questions that do not go to security underscores his defensiveness. The survey instrument is shot through with absurd choices while missing obvious questions, such as "How important is success of this mission?" and "Describe your morale?"

[. . .]

I think he's a shameless self-promoting pretend pollster, that's all.

[. . .]

You can trust John Zogby as much as this poll. Which means, not at all.

Radioblogger has posted a transcript of the aborted interview as well as the poll's questions and demographic information.

At Mystery Pollster, Mark Blumenthal explains that Zogby's poll was not conducted in a manner that allow it to be considered "scientific:"

The survey did not involve a "random probability" sample of all American troops serving in Iraq.

The principle of random sampling is what makes a poll "scientific." To meet that standard in this case, every member of the U.S. armed services in Iraq should have had some chance of being selected (or to put it statistical terms, the probability of selection had to be either equal or known for every member of the population).

In an earlier post, Blumenthal states:

Yet my "bottom line" on this survey remains uncertain.

[. . .]

The toughest question here is whether it is appropriate for news organizations to report on a survey with partisan sponsorship that requires readers and viewers to place an unusual degree of trust in unspecified methods and procedures. I will admit I do not have a good answer for that one -- different news organizations will apply different standards -- but big "grains of salt" are certainly in order.

Beyond Blumenthal's "scientific" criticism of Zogby's poll, the poll just doesn't pass the smell test. The poll's findings aren't consistent with other indications of what the troops think about the war. Murdoc put it well:

But I would swear that this poll seems to almost completely fit in line with how anti-war/Liberal/defeatist/BDS-suffering folks have been trying to rewrite recent history.

Zogby's press release indicates the poll was conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies. At The Officers' Club, John Noonan wonders why Zogby is working "in conjunction" with an organization who embraces fringe, blame America first ideology:

I've learned to distrust any center or institute with the word "peace" in its name. They always seem to have agendas.

As a brief example, the Le Moyne Peace Center recently hosted a Peace Consortium Conference with columnist and law professor Coleman McCarthy as the keynote speaker. Listen to what McCarthy had to say about September 11th:

The depth of the horror was initially beyond imagination. But the attack itself was not a surprise. On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., said that “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” He was right then and is right now. In only the past 20 years, the U.S. government has sent troops to kill or threaten to kill people in Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and now Afghanistan again. All are poor nations and mostly people of color.

That's right. According to McCarthy, the racist, poor-hating, seal clubbing America got what it deserved.

It gets worse with Zogby admitting to Hewitt that the poll was paid for someone who is anti-war:

HH: Good. John, your poll has created quite a lot of controversy out of Iraq. Who paid for it?

JZ: It was a gentleman who is a very wealthy individual who is anti-war, but he had absolutely no influence on any of the questions at all. He just simply wanted to know how do the troops feel?

Zogby also told hewitt Informational International was used to conduct the polling in Iraq. Who or what is Informational International? A good question which Riehl World View addresses in this revealing post:

There are only a few of their polls available in English. And they do provide an interesting look into the minds of the Lebanese. But I cannot for the life of me see one single qualification of Information International of Beirut which suggests they would be an appropriate choice to poll the US military, particularly while on the battlefield during a time of war. Nor could I find any work they've ever done in Iraq, unless of course it's in their larger body of work in Arabic.

Something here simply does not add up.

For my money this poll is simply another skirmish in the battle to rewrite history and discredit the war.

UPDATE: At Hyscience, Richard has more.