Zogby, Syracuse Media Still Polls Apart
The saga of the missing polls continued in New York’s 25th district Wednesday, as two media outlets declined to run the results of a survey they had paid for by Zogby International on the contest between Rep. Jim Walsh (R) and ex-House aide Dan Maffei (D).
The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse and WSYR-TV had asked Zogby to conduct a second poll of the race after the pollster acknowledged that his firm had improperly weighted the results of a survey last week. In that case, Zogby polled the 25th district but then weighted the data using voter registration information from the more-Republican 24th district.
Zogby promised the two media outlets that he would do a new poll from scratch, but when the results of that survey came in both declined to run them. Jim Tortora, the news director of WSYR-TV, wrote on the station’s Web site that after consulting with outside polling experts, he was concerned that Zogby had conducted the second poll using the same larger sample of 5,000 likely voters as he had on the first survey.
“With respect to Mr. Zogby, we felt the questions raised ... left us with only one choice: We had to pull the poll,” Tortora wrote.
Fritz Wenzel, Zogby International’s communications director, said his firm was still talking to WSYR and the Post-Standard and was “optimistic” they would run the survey.
“We believe that the results of this poll are true and accurate and we certainly stand by them and we stand by our 22-year record of unparalleled accuracy in public opinion polling, particularly in the field of political polling,” Wenzel said.
The last publicly released survey of the race, taken by the Benenson Strategy Group for Maffei’s campaign last week, showed Walsh leading the challenger by 2 points.
— Ben Pershing
