In Beyond the Horse Race, How to Read Polls and Why We Should, our founder John Zogby, offers readers a keen primer through the arcane and often secretive world of political polling. Arriving in 2024, the timing certainly feels quite opportune, as polls are increasingly shaping not just elections but even the broader political narrative in the United States. With his extensive experience running his opinion survey company, Zogby International, he is qualified to write such a book. Rather than focus on that more superficial “horse race” aspect of polling, this book explores what a good poll can tell you.
Among the takeaways emerging from Beyond the Horse Race is Zogby’s beat: how polls, when done right, go so much further than calling a winner-they reveal underlying shifts in voter ideology, demography, and motivation. Zogby shows why it’s important to delve into the “crosstabs”-the detailed tables revealing the deeper currents behind the raw numbers. “The horse race is only a headline,” he says, “but the real story is in how people decide, what issues drive them, and how their choices evolve over time”, beyond the horse race, an approach that underlined the depth of the Zogby polls and why they would be a source of political insight.
Most refreshingly candid, Zogby is on the pitfalls facing modern polls particularly the question of how to reach representative samples in an age when landlines have become as rare as the Dodo, and online polls are de rigueur. John Zogby Strategies, has moved with the times, offering online nationwide survey services that capture responses via everything from online focus groups to paid online focus groups. This feature enables Zogby to continue with the production of accurate and reliable results in this fast-evolving modern technological environment.
It is also a book about the history of polling errors – a learning curve from past elections. Zogby himself refers to several examples taken from his career, from the 2004 Presidential Election when his firm’s polling foretold – against most conventional wisdom – that George W. Bush would win what was a very close and contested race. He also gives some background on the 2024 election cycle, so that the reader can understand the methodologies leading to the Zogby 2024 poll and how trends such as the rise in popularity of independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy bring such results about, as was seen in the Zogby poll RFK. This book is about the changes in America as recorded through Zogby’s independent polling, which could yield far more information about the electorate than would be apparent by other means.
One merit this book does indeed do is to demystify how a mass public is designed, how the question in the polls is constructed, and why the selection of samples is so important to get accurate results. Most of Zogby’s works are qualitative. He moves the reader away from large-numbered headlines and focuses the analytical mind on smaller opinion polling analyses. This book is, therefore, particularly helpful to political consultants, journalists, and anybody working within market research firms or opinion polling analysis services. The book Beyond the Horse Race gives readers insight into the importance of independent polling even in such a democracy where public opinion shapes the political landscape. It is safe to say that whether one is a political junkie or part of a national online survey company, one cannot take lightly the advice from Zogby regarding reading and interpreting the polls themselves.
As was already argued in the course of the book, for anyone interested in reliable results of polls with such attention to detail and accuracy, a Zogby poll is worth paying attention to. In this accessible book, John Zogby proves once again why his reputation for reliability is well-deserved; therefore, a must-read by anyone who wants to understand better how opinion polls shape not only elections but even public policy and larger social trends.
