John Ziegler is the radio host-cum-documentarian behind HowObamaGotElected.com, a Web site promoting a forthcoming film whose premise is that Obama won because black people are ignorant. After hiring Zogby International to do what is called a "push poll" (described by Wikipedia as "a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll") of Obama voters, Ziegler then took to the field himself to conduct his poll face to face. The above video shows Ziegler's results, which are similar to the commissioned Zogby poll's findings, and it's featured prominently on his Web site.

While it's immediately troubling that Ziegler's questions consist of arguable, decontextualized claims presented as fact (ie "Which of the four [candidates] started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?"), upon further inspection, the video gets even more insidious. In this clip, which has already been viewed more than half a million times on YouTube, 7 of the 12 respondents are African American (58 percent), whereas nationwide, about 23 percent of Obama voters were black.

Nate Silver, the numbers magician who predicted Obama's victory within two-tenths of a point, called John Ziegler to try and sift through his bullshit. Unsurprisingly, Ziegler behaved like an angry lunatic who, when backed into a corner, resorts to telling Silver to (and we're paraphrasing here) go put his penis in his own butt.

Click through for some of the interview's spicier experts.

CONTINUED »

obamarama.jpg
Foiled By The Bradley Effect?

Ever hear of the Bradley Effect? It's a phenomenon named after Tom Bradley, a black L.A. mayor who ran for governor in 1982. Although polls showed him far ahead of his white competition, he ended up losing. The same thing happened in 1989, when the victory of black governor Douglas Wilder was much, much closer than polls projected it would be, and in 1990, when Harvey Gantt, who was ahead in the polls, lost by four points to Sen. Jesse Helms. The theory is that white people don't want to admit that they aren't supporting the black candidate in polls, although they have no such reservations when it actually comes to voting.

Is this what happened with Barack Obama last night? Across the board, the polls showed Obama had a comfortable lead over Hillary Clinton. After the votes were tallied, this turned out not to be the case. Experts have been warning people about this phenomenon as far back as May, but, nevetheless, people who make a living out of political polls are stumped.

CONTINUED »



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