There are few pollsters worse than John Zogby. Remember him? Back in 2009, Nate Silver dubbed Zogby “the worst pollster in the world.” In 2019, Donald Trump gleefully touted a Zogby poll giving him a 51% approval rating … when everyone else had him at around 40%. Last year, Zogby hilariously saw “signs” that Joe Biden would not run for reelection.
In any case, it’s not surprising that Zogby would find himself polling for conspiracy theorist and spoiler presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That, on its own, is no big deal. Zogby is a crap pollster, so few reputable organizations or campaigns would hire him. And all the reputable firms are either partisan and wouldn’t work with a third-party candidate, or have their credibility to protect.
On the flip side, the Kennedy campaign has zero interest in actual accurate data. Their “independent” candidate is immune to reality, data, or the truth. They need a pollster who is ready to bend all of that to their benefit if it befits their broader nefarious agenda.
So Zogby is a natural fit for both sides: a match made in data hell. And in that vein, we got this bizarre presentation yesterday.
First of all, a sample size of 26,400 is patently absurd, but whatever. They think it makes them sound authoritative and accurate, when Zogby has zero history of being either. Let’s look at the maps.
The first is supposedly the Trump-Biden horse race:
Maine is the tell. Trump should win one of the state’s electoral votes (like Nebraska, Maine allocates an electoral vote per congressional district), but he won’t win the full state. Virginia is also not going red. We do know from public polling that states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all extremely close, within the margin of turnout and ground operations. Could a map like the one above happen? Sure. That’s why we have to work hard. Is it determinative? Of course not, but that’s what Zogby and the Kennedy campaign want people to think.
The next map was predicated on the fantastical notion that the courts could “push [Trump] out” of the election, which is not a thing that can happen (and if it did, Republicans would replace him on the ballot):
Ha ha ha, okay. That was a good one! The anti-vaxx, anti-abortion, pro-Putin stooge could certainly beat Biden in red states absent a Republican candidate—a scenario which would never happen. Not only does Kennedy poll better among Republicans, but Trump is starting to realize this as well, and the concern (maybe even panic?) is palpable:
Even better, the more conservatives learn about Kennedy, the more they like him:
But then the poll asked people whether they were aware that Kennedy “claims that autism is linked to vaccines” and that he has floated a theory that covid was targeted at certain races. (Neither claim is based in fact.) About half of Republicans said they were aware of this; about 6 in 10 Democrats said they were.
Then it asked again whether people, with this knowledge, would consider voting for him.
Suddenly, the percentage of Republicans who said they would consider Kennedy rose by eight percentage points, nearly doubling to just shy of 1 in 5.
The percentage of Democrats who said they would consider Kennedy, meanwhile, dropped by seven points to 1 in 10.
So yes, red states would vote for Kennedy in a Trump-free scenario, as he would be the de facto Republican. But the notion that blue states would, including places like Oregon? That’s simply laughable.
The last map is based on a fantasy in which Biden drops out of the race, and we have a Kennedy-Trump faceoff:
I feel sorry for anyone living in that alternate reality. I would certainly be writing someone else in at the top of the ticket with that faceoff.
Yet the overall numbers aren’t what’s particularly ridiculous about this: It’s Kennedy’s subsequent suggestion that he’s better placed to defeat Trump, therefore Biden should drop out.
I’d say it was a publicity stunt, except that Kennedy believes his own bullshit. He likely really does think he is better-positioned to defeat Trump—despite not having anywhere near as much money, not having any organization, having terrible ratings among Democrats (which would only plummet as people learned more about him), and lacking a party and downballot candidate ecosystem to help drive turnout up and down the ticket.
It’s going to be a close election, and I’d rather be Biden, narrowly trailing in battleground polling, than Kennedy, who is narrowly ahead in his own bullshit poll but without any of the advantages of presidential incumbency, party infrastructure, and money.
But there’s one more piece here that is worth noting:
Kennedy’s entire case for competitiveness hinges on either Trump or Biden dropping out.
He can’t win a straight-up, realistic faceoff, so Zogby has helped him concoct a fantasy world in which the two major parties’ candidates do things that will never happen.
It’s all ludicrous and idiotic. But what else is new when talking about Kennedy?
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