Zogby rejects offer to sponsor a poll similar to Obama poll

Washington, Nov.21 : Pollster John Zogby has rejected a conservative commentator's offer to sponsor a poll similar to the one conducted for President-elect Barack Obama before he won the 2008 elections.

The commentator was proposing to mirror a poll of Obama voters that caused a political uproar when it suggested that Obama supporters didn't know what they were voting for.

John Ziegler, a Burbank-based documentary filmmaker, had commissioned the poll of 512 Obama voters. The results delighted the right and inflamed the left, drawing widespread coverage on the Web, cable news and radio.

Zogby International said in its summary of the results: "Just 2 percent of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post-election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign."

John Zogby said in a statement defending the poll: "We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. ... 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."

Zogby told Politico in a telephone interview that the volume of reaction was in the top 10 percent he had received to his 24 years of polling.

This week, Ziegler proposed to pay for a similar poll of McCain voters. But Zogby told Politico he would not do the poll the same way.

ANI