Webloggin » Zogby Predicts 2008 Electoral Landslide

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, via Boortz:

One of the country’s top pollsters was in Rochester on Thursday and suggested that the November presidential election will end in an electoral landslide, even though the candidates are running close.

“Essentially the election is at equilibrium,” said John Zogby, president of Zogby International. “This election will stay close until the end.”

Zogby said he thinks the race will turn in the last weekend before Election Day and though the popular vote will be tight, the successful candidate will win in a landslide.

He likened this year’s election to the contest in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter.

“This may be and probably is the most important election in our lifetime,” Zogby said. “I don’t say that lightly.”

Despite two books by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Americans still don’t know enough about him. And if they don’t think they know him well enough by the time they vote, they’ll go with the “comfortable old shoe,” Republican Sen. John McCain, Zogby said.

Landslide, huh. Landslide. Landslide.

At first blush, it seems to me to be quite the shocker to look back on the events of this year, after election day, and say to myself “who’d a-thunk that the McCain/Palin ticket was destined to win in the landslide we just saw?”

But then — that is exactly how I recall 1980. And 1988. And 2004 (which was far from a landslide…but still). We do seem to have this habit, throughout the election year, of perceiving everything as if it’s part of this photo-finish toss-up, closing our eyes to any evidence that perhaps things aren’t quite so chancey.

The print media, and to a lesser extent the electronic media, has an investment in this. If you think the result is pre-ordained you’re simply not going to be that interested in what’s going on. So our confirmation bias, is a direct result of their wishful thinking. A direct result. They feed us the information we use to draw our conclusions about things, and so we think the margin of error is razor-thin.

Zogby might very well be right; it might not be that thin. There is ample historical precedence for this. And, of course, we’re all directed to ignore the big lumbering elephant in the room…that Americans by-and-large really just don’t like liberalism.

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