The very creative John Zogby, in a print-only article in this week's New Yorker reveals why he was so sure the 2000 election would be incredibly close --- by polling America's true reality, the imaginary land of Oz. And... this same polling technique currently forecasts a 10% Kerry landslide for 2004! Here is what Zogby told Larissa MacFarquhar, the author of the article:
"I asked one question the Saturday before the election in 2000. I called my call center in Utica and said, 'Put this in the poll:"You live in the land of Oz, and the candidates are the Tin Man, who's all brains and no heart, and the Scarecrow, who's all heart and no brains. Who would you vote for?"' The next day, I called Utica and said, 'Whaddaya got?' They said, 'Well we've got Gore---, 'I said, 'I don't care about Gore. What's Oz? 'It was 46.2 for the Tin Man and 46.2 for the Scarecrow. It was right there that I knew I wasn't going to know what was going to happen. But I asked this question again two weeks ago and the Tin Man led by 10 points.
Apparently Zogby has been polling Oz on this race ever since, and as recently as April of 2004 the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were running dead even. But now it's a blow-out! (actually Zogby's poll is two weeks old, which suggests that in Oz the debates took place during September...).