Follow Up to Zogby Poll, One Point McCain Lead

Yesterday I posted about the Zogby one-day poll that showed a one-point McCain lead, 48-47. This really shouldn't have been big news because:

1. It's Zogby, one of the historically most inaccurate polling agencies in a year where all polling seems woefully biased.
2. A one-point lead is statistically meaningless. Obama by 2 with MOE of 3 says the same thing, for the most part.

I'm posting about it again be apparently it is big news. Traffic to this blog was low yesterday. That is to be expected; Fridays are traditionally slow days and it being Halloween on top of it just means that people have better things to do than read obscure blogs on the internet. Then I posted about Zogby. My traffic tripled in a matter of hours. Almost every search that brought people here involved the words "Zobgy" and "McCain lead".

Those last two words I think are the important ones. While Obama +2 or McCain +1 statistically are the same, emotionally the term "McCain lead" gets people interested. From the search terms, most people were just interested in verification. But you could see some people looking for evidence not to believe the poll--searches such as "Zogby poll innaccurate don't trust".

Hugh Hewitt suggests:

The shocker of a one-point lead for McCain in the Zogby national tracking poll for Friday will energize the GOP 96 hour effort everywhere.

In an environment where media, polling agencies, and $600 million of Obama's own advertising have painted a picture of inevitablilty of President Obama, it is remarkable how much interest one random sample generates. All because--as statistically meaningless as it is--people can say with no deception the phase "McCain lead" going in to the final weekend before the election.