Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / John Zogby

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John Zogby · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is the legendary pollster John Zogby. John,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: we scheduled this podcast a couple of weeks ago, and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in the interim the Iran War started and your schedule
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: got crazy. So when a crisis like this happens, tell
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: me how your world changes.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Well, for starters, this media media calling around the clock
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: literally New Zealand, Ireland, Malaysia yesterday. But you know, good
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: bit here in the United States, so that takes some time.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: And then secondly, a little less so these days because
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: much more of our work as private sector and you know,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: not non governmental agencies and so on. But in the
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: day it was not uncommon for one of my media
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: clients New York Post, Reuters, NBC News, Hey, can you
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: get on the phones right away or can you get
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: us a poll in twenty four hours?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, these media outlets are calling. What are they going
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to ask and what information do you have to give them?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Well, my expertise is not to discuss presidential strategy or
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: any of those sorts of things. Public opinion, what do
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the American people think? And I am fortunate that I
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: can go beyond the guys at the barbershop or the
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: folks in the grocery line. I can take samples, which
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I did. Interestingly, my son and I are together, and
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: we pulled the American people after the State of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Union message, remember that one.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: That was oh yeah last week.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so we pulled Wednesday and Thursday night then
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: and released a on Friday morning. We asked a question
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: about Iran. Do you support the president's handling of Iran?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And it was tied forty five percent supported, forty five
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: percent opposed. And then we went to bed Friday night
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: thinking that, hey, there's some movement in the negotiations, right,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and the negotiations are going to start again today when
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: reality intervened and we went to war. There is a
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: poll out, but it's not by us, and the poll
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: is far different than you would find normally when a
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: president announces a war. This time, twenty seven percent support
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: going to war with Iran a military action in Iran,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and forty nine percent the pose. The rest are not sure.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: That's Reuters and a company called Ipsos based in France.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, State of the Union happens, You're doing a pull.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What questions are you asking what information are you trying
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to clean?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Well, for starters, we tried to stick close to the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: president's speech, and so we want to know overall, do
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: you support or oppose his job as president, the job
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: he's doing as president. And of course we ask it
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: with a scale, so strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat opposed,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: strongly opposed, so we can get levels of intensity to
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: which are very important, not just majorities or pluralities. But
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: then how about is handling an immigration, crime and public safety, healthcare,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the environment and so on. And what we found, not
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: surprisingly at all, because this is the state of our world,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: is that the president is upside down. In all of
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: his numbers these there are more people who are opposed
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: to him than support him. The one exception this time
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: was on immigration, where this time he was forty seven
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: percent support and forty five percent oppose. We have been
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: seeing him upside down, but close like that. But the
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: nation is not simply split or hyper polarized. It is
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: divided in a way that we have not seen before
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: in our lifetime.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Go a little deeper. How is it divided in a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: way we haven't seen before?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: So you know, there used to be some flexibility you
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: know there were conservative Democrats. There were Believe it or not,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I'm here in New York and here in California.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: There were liberal Republicans Rocketype, Yeah, Rockefeller is the first
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: name that comes to mind. There aren't, make no mistake
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: about it. There are no conservative Democrats, there are no
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: liberal Republicans, and so essentially we have a partisan split
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: and little to no flexibility on those numbers. We are seeing, however,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: that the president's support among Republicans is that about in
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: our last poll last week eighty three eighty four percent.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Usually could expect ninety to ninety two percent. That's a
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: drop that we're watching. By the same token, there are
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: growing numbers of independents, and independence are very difficult to
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: pigeonhole as a unit. There are so many different sources
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and grades of independence, but as taken as a whole,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: President has about mid fifties who oppose him on every
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: issue among independence, although on some issues, notably immigration, crime,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: and public safety, it's upwards of sixty sixty one percent
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: among independents who oppose him.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So tell me about methodology In the old days, Well,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure people stopped at people's doors at one point,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: but it was phone. Now people don't pick up their landlines,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: then people don't pick up their phones. Then there's text,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: there's other companies use polls at the bottom of websites.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: How do you do it?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I do go back to the days when
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: we used everybody had a landline and sixty five percent
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: we're happy to do a poll. That was a response rate,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: and we evolved, not surprisingly due to technology and social
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: change in this country, to single digit or low double
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: digit response rates. And so we were among the pioneers
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: in developing online polling. And it was a long slog. Basically,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: we would gather as many email addresses and a coalition
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: of the willing as possible, that is, those who would
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: tell us in our telephone surveys back twenty five years
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: ago and so on, that they'd be willing to take
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: a poll. We gathered internally at the turn of the
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: millennium about a million one point two million.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: At the.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Within a couple of years of email addresses that were
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: validated demographically and behavioral characteristics.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: How do you validate them by telephone?
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  Speaker 2: Interestingly, so when it was one or the other, we
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: would either use our usual telephone surveys and at the
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: end ask if they would be willing to take a
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: survey online and give us an email address, And so
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: we plottingly collected that way.
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  Speaker 3: Or the other way around.
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  Speaker 2: We would purchase tons of email addresses and have four
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: servers going at the same time inviting people at random
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: to sign up to take surveys. And today we have
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: fifteen million.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, So then you called them and asked them what.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Well if the online surveys, we would send out a
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: random sampling of the email addresses that we had, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: we would ask them, well, beyond political surveys, but you
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: know our registered de voter, they're likely to vote, what's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: their party identification? And then we'd get into politically the
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: president or the governor, whatever our universe was, the mayor,
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: job performance, job performance on a number of issues, personal
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: favorability of them, and possible candidates running against them. In
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: proprietary a private polling for candidates, individuals or retail brands.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: We would ask what would move them, what drives you,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: what would make you more likely to support, what would
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: make you more likely to oppose? And if you knew
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: this about that, would it make you much more likely
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  Speaker 2: somewhat more likely, somewhat less likely, much less likely to
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: support or purchase or whatever. But a typical poll could
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: be forty fifty questions.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have never answered a pull. I remember before
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: people meeters, they once mailed a form to us and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: you filled out what you watched. So in the people Meter,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: of course, being Nielsen in television, the question becomes there's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: always a margin of error, But how do you ensure accuracy?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: So you start with the sampling procedure. So today talking
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: about online polls as an example, but the same principles
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: will hold true for those who are still doing telephone surveys.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Is that we have a list of fifteen million Americans
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: and who have been validated, and in their entirety they
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: are representative of the American people demographically. If we're doing
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: a poll, say we want a thousand likely voters, we
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: will take what's called a random stratified sample of about
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: ten thousand email addresses from that fifty million. The keyword
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: there random. Everybody has to have the same chance of
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: being selected from that pool as everybody else. And secondly, stratified,
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  Speaker 2: we don't draw them nationally. We draw them by region.
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  Speaker 2: So if thirty percent of our sample is from the south,
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  Speaker 2: a thirty percent of the population or the electorate is
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: from the south, as an example, then thirty percent of
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  Speaker 2: our pool is from the south, twenty five percent of
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  Speaker 2: the northeast twenty five, twenty six per and so on.
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  Speaker 2: And then we begin the invitation process knowing that we're
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: targeting regions and knowing after all these years that those
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: responses will come back within those levels of stratification and
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  Speaker 2: be somewhat somewhat representative of people in those regions by ray,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: by age, by educational level, by gender. It's not a
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  Speaker 2: perfect world, so that when those numbers do come in,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: there may be some groups that are slightly underrepresented, normally Blacks, Hispanics,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: poorer people, normally men, young men. And what we do
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: is we apply waiting, just simple waiting, to bump them
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: up to what the expectation is for voter turnout or
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  Speaker 2: for retail shopping the adult population in general. But you never,
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: let's say, you hardly ever get a situation where you
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  Speaker 2: have way too many women, or way too many whites,
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  Speaker 2: or way too many of any group. The waiting generally
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  Speaker 2: is slight.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, you do a lot of market research. Steve Jobs
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: famously said he didn't believe in market research because people
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: didn't know what they wanted until he gave it to them.
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  Speaker 1: Other people say market research will tell you where you've been,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: but not where you're going. How would you respond to those?
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  Speaker 2: Well, for starters, I've got an Apple phone, so sorry, Steve,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: what was the other the other question?
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  Speaker 1: People say that it will tell you where you've been
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: but not where you're going.
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  Speaker 2: No, Now, we believe in and we do projective polling. Now, look, Bob,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: nobody sees the future, at least clearly. But there is
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: a way of using analytics, and I might add some
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  Speaker 2: good artwork involved too, to ask questions about how would
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: you respond to a certain situation, and from the tabulation
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: of those responses on how folks would respond, or how
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: they would anticipate, or how they would behave or how
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: their minds would change, you get a a reasonable reading
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of what people will do under certain circumstances. However, there
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: are other variables in our world, and so look, I
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: could have done continued my poll through Friday night about
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: how do you feel about Trump's handling of Iran? I
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: did not know that we'd be bombing the hell out
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of Iran Saturday morning.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So you're not the only Polster. You have a high
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: profile amongst the small quadre. What is the special sauce
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: that you bring to the table?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Indititionally, it was accuracy. That's where I gained my fame.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I got races on the gubernatorial level here in New
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: York that no one even came close to. I was
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: hired by the Murdoch Empire, Liberal Democrat that I am.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: I'm polling for the New York Post and Early Fox
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: in ninety five and ninety six. Then I was hired
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: by the largest news agency in the world, Reuters, and
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: the Reuter Zogbee Pole was born in nineteen ninety six.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: And it did not hurt me at all that my
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: colleagues at the networks and at the universities were attacking
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: me because I was standing alone saying that the Clinton
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Dole race is a lot closer than people think. And
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: when the numbers came in and the attacks continued, I
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: got that race right to anywhere between one to three
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: tenths of a percent. I'd already gotten some other high
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: profile ones right and that at.
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  Speaker 3: That point things just soared.
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  Speaker 2: But then I went on to get other races right
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: and ones that no one else got right in Mexico,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: in Israel, in Albania. And now I'm a strategic planner,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: and I know that you cannot keep a reputation as
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: the most accurate polster in the world forever. So that's
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: when we started to focus on our strategic thinking and
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: on thought leadership, and a number of books that came
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: out talking about the future and what we see from
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: at that point, twenty years of polling, thirty years of polling,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: and so on, why.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Were you more accurate than your competitors.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: There were you know, ninety plus percent of what I
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: did was like everybody else. But some of the things
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: that were different was that I would apply a slight
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: weight for political party identification. Many of my colleagues don't
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: believe in that. They called it a trailer variable, something
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that's very soft. So look, if I'm for George W.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Bush today, I'm a Republican. If I'm for al Gore tomorrow,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: then I'm probably a Democrat. I believe that party is
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: a lead variable. Many of us are born with it.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Most of us filter our information through our party identification.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And so I found that some of my colleagues were
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: actually getting much larger fluctuations even on a day by
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: day basis in their samples. Too many Democrats, too few Republicans.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I had noticed early, and again I'm a liberal Democrat,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: but I noticed early a tendency for Democrats to answer
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the phone more than Republicans. That's why I feel that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: to a great degree. That's the one thing that I
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: did differently that helped propel.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Me in the last ten years. Nate Silver has gotten
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of notoriety for pull averaging, pull balancing. What's
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: your opinion on that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Well, he kind of bounced me out, and so they're
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit of bias.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: But my sense.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Is I pull people, I don't poll numbers. I get
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: a feel for polls. I mean, when when I had
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: a call center, I would visit the call center during elections,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: and what did you hear? What were they really saying?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: These are the the telephone callers that I would talk to,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: and they would tell me, you know, there were people
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: who were really soft, there are people who were not
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: paying attention but intended to vote. There are people who
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: are very hard. But I got a sense that those
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: numbers were really an aggregation of people not simply an
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: aggregation of numbers.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I think with Nate.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: There was too much emphasis on analytics and an algorithm.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: That are algorithms that he used that could be applicable
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: sometimes and not so applicable. I'm sorry at other times,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: and then I do feel and you know, I wish
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: him all the best he's had, all the best. In fact,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: that he was a bit too much like Icarus in mythology.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: He flew with wax wings too close to the sun,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: and that sooner or later, just like Zogby, you get
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: one wrong and people start looking at you funny. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure he handled it all well.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: That well, good analogy. Okay, many people were surprised by
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Trump in twenty sixteen. There was less surprise in twenty
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: twenty four. But were you surprised based on your numbers?
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Well, surprised, yes, of course, But on election night, no,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: And you'll find I didn't poll in twenty sixteen. We
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: had just started a transition new company after a non
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: compete for a few years. I sold the original company,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: so we were not in the polling loop. But I
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: was analyzing the trend lines in the well, the whole election,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: but particularly in the last ten days, and there was
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: clearly a momentum against Hillary Clinton, a momentum towards Donald Trump.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And I published a piece on Forbes in the early
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: afternoon of election day saying, if anybody knows, if anybody
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: claims that they know what's going to happen, they're lying
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: because we don't know what's going to happen. There's a
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: trend line here that I'm watching.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, couple of questions in twenty twenty four. You may
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: not have done research, but you're an expert in this area.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: If Biden had stepped decide would a Democrat, if there
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: was a primary process, would they have won? Secondarily, was
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Kamala af flawed candidate from minute one?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Those are two very good questions, and we will be
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: asking them for years. If Biden had stepped aside, and
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: most importantly, had allowed for a primary system to develop
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and for candidates to be out there and for Democrats
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: to have a real choice, it could have been a
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: far different election. Was and in fact, we didn't see
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: since a final break of those battle ground states, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: many of them until the very end, you know, until
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a few days before those were competitive. Secondly, I thought
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: she was a good candidate. But she had one hundred
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: and seven days. Now, those of us who follow politics
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: very closely, you know, knew Kamila Harris. Anew of Kamala
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Harris had followed her career. Yes, there were flaws that
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: liberals would would not identify with her. Yes, there were flaws.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I believe with Democrats and independence and public opinion about
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Gaza shifting that Kamala Harris may have done a bit
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: better if she had shifted, and probably gotten more younger
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: voters in the process and more.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Black voters as well.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: But with that said, no, I don't I don't think
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: that there were any built in flaws that in her
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: persona or her career that may that pointed her out
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: to be a loser.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say her fear failure in the previous
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: presidential primary circuit to get even one delegate was indicative
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of me. But let me jump forward. Bill Clinton selected
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, it's a disaster in nineteen ninety
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: four congressional races. Then he famously triangulates based on information.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: My question here is not specific to Bill Clinton. To
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: what degree do politicians make their decisions based on the polls?
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: To what degree eighty.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Plus.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: You know, no leader can afford to be.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Totally ignoring the public. Will the vox popular.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: That's where you know, I think our president today has
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: been playing very successfully to that hardcore base of MAGA.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: But there is evidence in the Reuters poll today that
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: there's a chipping away of that built in you know,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: forty two percent that he Trump just gets for showing
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: up and for continuing his style of campaigning. So I
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: think that you know, it wasn't invented with Bill Clinton.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: George H. W. Bush, to be sure, had a briefing
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: book with the latest polling numbers from the night before
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: every single day of his presidency, and if Ronald Reagan didn't,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: then Jeffrey Deaver, is behind the scenes image maker and
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: communications person, certainly was reading the polls.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Now, these may be so questions compared to your statistics,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: but what do we know. You have these polls that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: are starting to lean against Trump. He does not seem
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to be changing his behavior. And in addition, there have
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: been authoritarian tendencies we've never seen previously. So traditionally we
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: might say the polls are against them, the person's in decline.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But we have a unique situation with the way he's behaving.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I could go through all the facts, but you know them.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So is this a different thing or the poll if
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the public ultimately is such that he's going to lose out,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: his party, his mission, etc. Or can we say that
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: this is a different landscape. You know, they're talking about
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: him controlling the elections. There are all of these things,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: those supersede poles.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: There are other variables. Yeah.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Now, just by way of context, let's understand that Barack
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Obama won with majorities in two thousand and eight and
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: twenty twelve. In between, he lost almost record numbers of
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: seats for his party in twenty ten in twenty fourteen,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: his success did not translate into his party's success. In fact,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: he lost numerous state legislative seats and majorities during that
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: time period. So back to President Trump. If the election
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: were held today today, the Republicans would probably take a beating.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: What do I base that on? For starters, that semi
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: artificial reading that we take the congressional generic who was
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: to vote for in your district today?
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: The Democrat of.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: The Republican We know that Democrats in the polls need
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: to have a four and a half to five point
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: lead that's the threshold, and from there we can translate
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: that into gaining seats in Congress. Today they hold about
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: a five and a half point lead. But we also
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: know that in eleven fifteen special elections for state legislature
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: or Congress, or mayor or courts throughout the country, that
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Democrats have won every one of those seats, and that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: there are other elections that have taken place where Democrats
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: have outperformed Republicans in solid or outperformed their previous election
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: to that seat or the president's vote count in that
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: state or district. And so evidence is pointing to if
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the election were held today, we'd be looking I think
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: at solid Democratic victories that in fact, there are a
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: number of states that weren't even on the radar screen
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: that are now on the radar screen as possible Democratic
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: pickups in the Senate and also the House. But Bob,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the election is not today, and one miscalculation that may
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: very well hurt the president is not only that Reuter's
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: number that, instead of basking in the success of killing
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the Ayatola and numerous other leaders, only twenty seven percent
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: support the president forty nine percent oppose, but it's it's
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: also in the sense that what are Americans talking about
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: the prices at the grocery store and the prices at
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the gasoline pump, And interestingly, the prices at the gasoline
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: pump had actually come down and been coming down. Projections
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: are very soon we're going to see the cost of
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: oil barrel going up dramatically, and probably at the gas
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: pump as well.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Let's go back. Why did Democrats need that four and
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: a half percent margin.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, that is the way.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: That districts are reapportioned or gerrymandered. You know that in
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: states every ten years, the mandate from the courts are
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: that those seats have to be reapportioned basically on demographics
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: and so on. And that Republicans have controlled state more
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: state legislatures than Democrats have for the last twenty some
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: odd years, certainly the last two censuses that have been taken,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: And so there are many more solid red congressional districts
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: than there are solid blue congressional districts. And so if
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: we're trying to extrapolate that onto a national vote, that's
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: the average that Democrats need. That's kind of the threshold point.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Let's pull the lens back a little bit. Talk about
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the populace at large. Is I supposed specifically Trump? Okay,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: there are some people say that we really agree on
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: many things and it's only the the number that we
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: don't agree on. Then other people say, no, there's a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: real battle between the elites and the not as educated.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Shall we say? Then they say, well, you know, it's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: almost like the Mason Dick line. There's a different mentality
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: in the South than there is in the north. What's
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the temperature of our country? How does it break down?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Is any different than it used to be?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: It's very different than it used to be. Now, I'll
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: go back to the twenty twenty election if I can,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: and very close election, let's call it a tie. But
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: in a poll that I did in late two thousand
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and three, I did a national poll on cultural values,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: you know, God's guns, that sort of thing. And what
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: I discovered when I broke down my polling sample into
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: those who were from red states those who were from
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: blue states, I found, no matter how close those state
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: votes may have been, that in a red state, sixty
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: one percent said that they possessed a firearm. Thirty five
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: percent of those in blue states possessed a firearm. You know,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: seventy plus percent identified God in red states as an
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: all powerful, all loving God who's watching over me. There
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: was about thirty six thirty seven percent of those in
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: blue states. We had real differences red and blue. That
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: would include at that point in time New Mexico that
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: that Gore had won by about two hundred votes, or
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: New Hampshire that Democrat won by a few votes, and
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: so even closely contested. So yes, there are real differences.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: And now the two sides have nested, and that has
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: been enabled by our political leaders in this sense that
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: we elect good people, but those people have to serve
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: their party and balance that somehow with serving their district.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: And but when they balance their party, that mitigates against
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: crossing the aisle. We've gotten real hostility taking place, the
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: kind of hostility inside the Congress, inside congressional staffs that
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: we haven't seen since the eighteen fifties and that ended
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: up in a civil war. So yeah, there are reasons
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: politically to fear. However, fundamentally, there are many things that
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Americans can agree.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Upon, and.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: You know, national leadership can address that, or they can
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: take advantage of the divisiveness. We just happen to have
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: leadership right from the very top. That's taking advantage of
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: the divisiveness.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Well, it's clear what's going to happen for the Republicans
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the next presidential cycle. It could be Trump, even though
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the Constitution says else other things. But there are a
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: couple of very clear people Vance, Rubio, whatever. Democrats, it's
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: more wide open. My question here is not the specific
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: candidate or what's going on with Newsom. My question is establishment.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: People have been saying you have to run to the center.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Those disillusions say no, we have to do something more
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: similar to Bernie. Let's Bernie's a lightning rod. The word
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: woke is lightning rod. But we have younger generations. Leaving
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: out the issue of celebrity, which way should the Democrats go?
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: The way of problem solving and clarity that is pan ideological.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: There are things that we agree on despite labels. And
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the bottom line is you saw zorin Mamdani win on
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: affordability and with a plan for housing, a plan for childcare,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: a plan for public transportation, something that appeared to New
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Yorkers to be popular and addressing the issues.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: More and more.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Voters are younger, are forty five and less. That's the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: cutoff point for millennials forty five to about thirty and
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: then under thirty gen Z. And those are people who
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: are saying, I don't care what you label it, just
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: show me the path of resolving it. And I think
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: what polls are showing today is, or what they showed
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: in twenty four was that people were tired of the Democrats.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: They were tired of the preachiness, the wolkeness, they were
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: tired of a president who in effect should have stepped down.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's any argument you'll find anywhere that
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: suggests that he should have stayed in the race. But
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: what it was tantamount to was somebody lying and a cadra,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: a small cadre of people who were lying about the
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: president's health. What can work despite the label on the
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: left or the right, is the path of least resistance
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: to resolving issues.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: What do you say to people who have no faith
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: in polls the general public? Let's put it this way.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: It was lawyers and Watergate, then politicians and polls. Many
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: people have no faith in the system, and they have
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: no faith in polls. Starting with polls, what would you tell.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Them, Well, if you're expecting a poll to be correct
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: to the one tenth of a percentile. Every time a
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: poll comes out, then don't you know we can tell
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: you the direction that things are heading. You know, some
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: folks don't poll past Saturday or Sunday night before an election.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: That leaves Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday where things
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: can change. And believe me, they have. You have up
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: to ten to fourteen percent who tell us in polls
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: that they've finally made up their mind for sure in
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: the polling booth or that day as they were heading
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: to the polling booth. So have reasonable expectations for polls.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: That's for starters. Secondly, go beyond the horse race. Every
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: poll publishes many other things. Maybe all the media don't
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: pick it up.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Maybe they just.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Pick up that horse race only. But there's so much
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: to be gleaned, so much to learn, you know, about
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: the American people, or the people of anywhere, the people
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: of your city from poles, So they're very useful.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we saw resistance in Minneapolis, never mind elsewhere.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: We have this war that based on your numbers, the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: public doesn't favor. Can we anticipate something akin to the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: mass protest of the sixties. Can we anticipate a rupture
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: which we have seen in other countries but not in
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: America for longer than a century. Or is the system
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: going to hold?
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know that that's necessarily an either or Okay,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: of the system is a broad term. But mass protests, Yes,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: we've had mass protests in recent years. There are mass
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: protests actually going on right now. This war with Iran,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: which is going to take President admits at least four
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: to five weeks. That doesn't play in his favor, but
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: it's going to be more than four or five weeks.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: How do you build a new system? We're not good
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: at that. Incidentally, building new systems in different places. We
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: got our butt handed to us whenever we try that.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: But that's going to coincide with the spring, and that's
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: when those mass protests really begin. This has been a
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: particularly cold winter witnessed Minneapolis, and look at the numbers
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: of people that came out in Minneapolis and in Portland
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and in Memphis and so on, and so yeah, I
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: can anticipate this was a big one. Going to war
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: with Iran. There is no ayatola caucus in this country.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: I said that before, but there is a sense that
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: you just can't go around decapitating a government. What does
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin have to say about that? Is there a
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: target now on Vladimir Zelensky? What is President she have
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: to say about that? With Taiwan just across the straits,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: you know, this is a bad policy. It's not supported
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: by the American people. We will not tolerate. And I'll
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: give you some polling numbers in a second. We will
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: not tolerate anything that's protracted.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, those numbers, Yeah.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: All right, So I'll go back for starters till late
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: September two thousand and one. That's when I got my
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: folks back on the telephone after nine eleven, and I
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: wanted something for the historical record. So we asked, do
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: you support a war on terrorism? I'm shortening these questions,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: support or oppose a war on terrorism? Ninety one percent
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: said yes. What if that war on terrorism were to
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: last a year to two years? Seventy seven percent said yes.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: What if it were to last more than two years?
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Fifty seven percent said yes. Remember how numb we were
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: still in late September of two thousand and one, and
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: already there was a sense we're still in the post
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Vietnam War era. If we go to war, win it
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: and win it quickly, we don't have any patients. And
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: of course that's what happened both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: we got a sneak peak on Iran last year. My
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: son and I we asked this was about taking out
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Iran's nuclear reactor nuclear program, and we asked, do you
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: support the United States going to war to take out
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the nuclear program? Only fifty percent said yes, they supported,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: forty five percent of posed. What if it takes six
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: months to a year, it went down to forty two
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: percent support and a majority of posed. What if it
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: takes more than one year, thirty five percent support, sixty
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: percent opposed. So we have a strong sense from polling
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: data that first of all, this isn't even popular right
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: now after we've gone to war. But this will certainly
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: not be popular as you go down the road. And
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: what's the resolution, what's the what's the end? How do
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: we get out? Do we make things better? Those are questions,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Those are questions that are hanging in the air.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I know that you have to go, but I
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: have one final question before we let you. We had
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: World War One based on the assassination of one person.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: We had the.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Arab spring, we had an over educated fruit vendor. Is
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: it possible something like that could happen in America? A
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: match lights a small fire that nobody foresees and it
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: turns into a conflagration.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: You know, for most of my life, I've been the
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: optimist in the room, and I am the optimist in
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: the long haul. I have great faith and millennials in
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: gen z they're not steeped in our crap. You know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: they start with not tabula rasa, but they start with
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: a different culture and different.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: Set of values. But yes, it is possible. It is possible.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Thanks for taking the time to speak with my audience.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: John.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I know you know we have this crisis and your
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: time is valuable. So thanks again. We've been speaking with
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: legendary pollster John Zogby in the middle of a crisis.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: There's more information to get, but that's all we have today.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, John, Thank you, Bob.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: I really enjoyed this.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob Left SAIDs