John Zogby - Career

Career

An interpreter of the political scene, Zogby had a brief stint as an aspiring politician himself in 1981, when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Utica, New York. He describes himself as a Democrat, while his polling firm is "independent and nonpartisan."

Zogby International

Zogby founded the polling firm Zogby International in 1984. Since then, he has conducted polls and focus groups around the world, though he has gained the most publicity for his polls of United States presidential elections.

He first gained attention in the 1992 presidential election when he released a survey showing the New York State Governor Mario Cuomo would lose in his home state to incumbent President George H. W. Bush. That poll is widely thought to have pushed Cuomo from the race. Zogby gained more national attention in the 1996 presidential election when his final poll came within a tenth of a point of the actual result. Zogby also correctly polled the cliffhanger result of the 2000 presidential election won narrowly by George W. Bush, in contrast to most other pollsters who had expected Bush to win easily.

He has been known as an industry innovator, making it his standard practice to weight his political polls using party identification, which is not a common practice with other polls. Zogby claims this as one key reason his political polling has been so accurate over the years.

In 1998, Zoby began developing an interactive online polling methodology using a massive database of respondents that closely represents the national population at large.

Zogby International has also had success with elections in countries outside the United States. Zogby correctly called the 2001 Israeli election for Ariel Sharon, the 2000 Mexican election for Vicente Fox and again in Mexico with the victory of Felipe Calderón in 2006. Also, Zogby has made a sideline of polling Arab attitudes toward the United States, particularly in regard to Lebanon.

Zogby penned a comprehensive review of the process of polling the volatile 2008 Democratic Party nomination race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

On January 18, 2010, on the Hannity Show, when asked by the host to make a prediction in the next day’s special election in Massachusetts, Zogby said that he thought Martha Coakley would win “not much, just barely, one or less points” over Scott Brown. He clarified within one hour of this show airing that his statement was "a hunch" and was not based on a specific poll since his company was not polling the election in Massachusetts.

Sale of Zogby International

A majority interest in Zogby International was sold to IBOPE Inteligência, a subsidiary of the IBOPE group, a Brazilian multinational company specializing in media, market and opinion research. It was announced in March 2011 that the company would be known as IBOPE Zogby International and would be managed by Chief Executive Officer, Kjell de Orr, and a five-member board of directors, including John Zogby, Márcia Cavallari, CEO of IBOPE Inteligência, Kjell de Orr, Marcelo Kac, Latin American Business and Operations Executive Director for IBOPE Inteligência, and Prince Turki bin Khalid al Saud.

As of early 2012 Zogby holds no interest in IBOPE and has not worked directly with IBOPE.us clients since late 2010.

In February 2012, Zoby joined his son, Jonathan Zogby, and a group of former senior staff members from Zogby International at a new company called JZ Analytics. Zogby is a senior analyst with the company.