John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International, remains by all accounts the hottest pollster in the United States today.
"All hail Zogby, the maverick predictor who beat us all," proclaimed the Washington Post in November 1996 after Zogby alone called that presidential election with pinpoint accuracy. In the recent razor-thin 2000 elections, daily national tracking polls conducted by Zogby International in the last few weeks foretold a tightening of the race for president while nearly all other polling firms projected an easy victory for Gov. George W. Bush. Zogby International instead was the first to observe the gap closing significantly between Bush and Vice-President Al Gore in the waning hours of the election. In his post election 2000 review, the acclaimed Godfrey Sperling, columnist for the Christian Science Monitor called John Zogby "Champion Pollster."
"In 1996, John Zogby came within one-tenth of 1 percent of the presidential result - the best performance turned in by any of the pollsters. This year Mr. Zogby was the first pollster I heard being cited on TV as finding that Gore was pulling out slightly, by 2 percent, ahead of Mr. Bush. But when I talked to Zogby a few days ago, he was elated with how close he had come this year to predicting the final outcome - and rightly so." Zogby continued to rank in the top tier in 2004 both in the nationwide polls for Reuters and in the 20 states that he polled.
Since 1996, Zogby has polled for Reuters News Agency, the largest news agency in the world, and in 2000 to 2004, polled for NBC News, the network news watched by most Americans. His clients also include MSNBC, CNBC, the New York Post, Fox News, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Gannett News Service, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Albany Times Union, the Buffalo News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Cincinnati Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Toledo Blade, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and nearly every daily newspaper in New York State, as well as television stations throughout the U.S.
Zogby International has partnered with Reuters and C-Span for Election 2008. He has been praised as "the most accurate pollster" (Seattle Post Intelligencer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, USA Today), "respected" and "pioneering" (Albany Times Union), "the pace setter in the polling business" (New York Post), and "the big winner in 1996" (Campaigns and Elections, L. Brent Bozell, and the O'Leary/Kamber Report).
Zogby has appeared on all three nightly network news programs plus NBC's "Today Show," ABC's "Good Morning America" and is a frequent guest on MSNBC and CNBC special programs, including MSNBC’s "Hardball with Chris Matthews." He also is a regular political commentator for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation.
He has been spoofed on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Late Show with David Letterman. He has been profiled in the New Yorker, Fortune Magazine, Inc., and Investors’ Business Daily.
The highpoint of his life was his October 28, 2004 appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. John was a guest again on January 9, 2008.
His analytical expertise has been published on the opinion pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday and the Boston Globe. He is also a founding contributor to the prestigious website, The Huffington Post.
Following his correct call in the 1997 New Jersey gubernatorial election, the Houston Chronicle exclaimed, "and the winner again is John Zogby." Mary Matalin, host of her own national radio show, calls Zogby the "prince of pollsters," and Barry Farber has declared him "America's Pollmaster General."
He has also distinguished himself in Canada where he alone called the popular vote victory of the Liberals over the Parti Quebecois in the Quebec election of 1998. He was the first pollster to see a victory for Vicente Fox in the 2000 Mexican election and came back to be one of only a few to catch Felipe Calderon’s razor-thin Mexican election victory in 2006. Mr. Zogby also triumphed in the 2001 Israeli election being the only pollster to call the 26-point margin victory of defense minister, Ariel Sharon. Zogby further distinguished himself by polling the Iran Presidential election closer than even the Iran News Agency.
Zogby holds degrees in history from Le Moyne College and Syracuse University. He has taught history for 25 years. In addition he is a member of the Board of Trustees of Le Moyne College. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award in June 2000, and In 2005, he was awarded Honorary Doctorate Degrees from State University of New York and the Graduate School of Union University. Mr. Zogby is also a Senior Advisor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, serves as the first-ever Senior Fellow of the Catholic University Life Cycle Institute in Washington, D.C., and will serve as a University of California, Irvine, Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow during the 2008-09 academic year. He has served on the Congressionally-created Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and the Advisory Council for Bio-Technology for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is a Commissioner on CSIS’s Commission on Smart Power. Mr. Zogby has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the CSIS Next America project, an initiative inspired by his pioneering survey work on America’s First Global Generation. Next America seeks to engage future American leaders in a substantive foreign policy debate that will continue beyond November’s elections.
Zogby is a much-sought-after lecturer and panelist. A combination of dynamic intellect and engaging style has made him the speaker of choice for universities, organizations and corporations throughout the world. He has been listed with Leading Authorities, Goodman Speakers Bureau and Capital Speakers, Inc. in Washington, DC, and the National Speakers' Bureau, in Chicago. He is currently exclusively listed with The American Program Bureau, the Leading International Agency for Speakers & Creative Programming. He lectures all over the world.
He has polled, researched and consulted for a wide spectrum of business media, government, and political groups including IBM, Coca Cola, Microsoft, CISCO Systems, Philip Morris, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, MCI, Reuters America, and the United States Census Bureau since 1984.
Zogby has polled and conducted focus groups throughout the United States and throughout the world.
Zogby is the author of The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, published by Random House in August 2008 and now available online and in bookstores. Zogby’s analysis of years of data yields an astonishing perspective on Americans’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, now and in coming years. Understanding this emerging reality will be key for leaders in all fields who want to reach audiences that are more media-savvy, better informed, and more technologically enabled than ever before, individuals in search of rewarding and fulfilling careers in tomorrow’s growth fields, politicians and CEOs looking to marry policies and practices to the rising demand for social responsibility, and anyone who wants to market to the emerging new American consensus. Beyond telling a fascinating story, the conclusions in this book are a must-read for everyone from Main Street to Madison Avenue to Capitol Hill. The Way We’ll Be will redefine how we view America’s future.
He is married to Kathleen Zogby, a retired special education teacher, and has three sons, Jonathan, Benjamin, and Jeremy. </p