In the past I have been rather skeptical when reading polling results published by Zogby International. Much, but not all, of this sentiment is connected to Zogby's incorrect November 2004 prediction that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush in that month's presidential election. Additional reports, such as this one from Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal that show Zogby running afoul of commonly held polling standards, have not instilled much confidence in the results coming out of the organization. Yet if there were any inkling in my mind that I could seriously read polling from Zogby it was put to rest by an piece on Hillary-haters in Friday's issue of The Washington Post by Dana Milbank.

According to Milbank, the normal crew of conservatives whose hatred for the Clinton family has not subsided in the more than six years since they left the White House trotted out polling today showing that a significant portion of the public believes that a Hillary Clinton administration would be corrupt. Of course such a position is a minority, according to the poll in question, but a somewhat significant one.

But looking at the details of the survey, Milbank emerges rather skeptical -- and for good reason.

The poll Fitton commissioned, actually five questions added to a nationwide poll by Zogby International, was rather loaded in its language. "Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt," one question begins. In another question about Hillary Clinton, every answer included the word "corrupt," and the question was not asked about other candidates so that a comparison could be made.

The pollster, John Zogby, defended the questions as "balanced" -- a label Fitton made no attempt to earn. As he presented the results yesterday, he announced that Bill Clinton's financial conflicts of interest "make the issues of Halliburton and Dick Cheney . . . pale in comparison." [emphasis added]

The fact that Zogby would accept a commission to poll-test attacks on a political candidate of any stripe begins to call into question his stature as a supposedly non-partisan pollster. But even leaving this broader complaint aside, because there are certainly some partisan pollsters who are able to produce solid non-partisan numbers (say, like Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff, who team up to do surveys for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal), the apparently unbalanced wording of the polling conducted by Zogby International belies the notion that the organization is serious about coming up with results that actually reflect the views of the American public rather than just the views of those who paid for its services. To harp on one example, beginning a question on the scruples of a politician by saying that some people believe his or her spouse was corrupt inserts such a bias to void the results of the question -- and perhaps even the questions that follow. Simply put, the questions in the poll were not, as Zogby insists, "balanced."

You can take a look at the poll (.pdf) if you'd like. But suffice it to say that it merely underscores the need to take polling from Zogby International with a huge grain of salt -- and perhaps even a whole box full of large grains of salt.

Update [2007-4-6 14:41:27 by Jonathan Singer]: Mark Blumenthal adds more on the poll and takes the further step of comparing it with some unbiased polls -- for a surprising result.