After stirring up controversy over whether Obama voters got sufficiently informed by the media about the campaign and the policies, Zogby has curiously declined to conduct the same poll among McCain voters.  John Ziegler obtained the funding for the parallel poll, but John Zogby decided not to offer the rebuttal effort:

Pollster John Zogby has rejected a conservative commentator’s offer to sponsor a poll to test the knowledge of people who voted for John McCain. The commentator was proposing to mirror a poll of Obama voters that caused a political uproar.

The results of the earlier poll had suggested that Obama supporters didn’t know what they were voting for.

It also created a firestorm of criticism among liberal bloggers and commentators, who accused Ziegler and Zogby of everything from push-polling to racism.  Ziegler challenged his critics to a parallel poll with McCain voters, with a loser-pays-all stake in the outcome.  Apparently, the funding appeared, but Zogby lost his nerve:

“I am happy to do a poll of both Obama voters and McCain voters, with questions that I formulated and sponsored either by an objective third party or by someone on the left, in tandem with a John Ziegler on the right – but poll questions that have my signature,” Zogby said.

“I believe there was value in the poll we did,” Zogby added. “I also believe it was not our finest hour. This slipped through the cracks. It came out critical only of Obama voters.”

Oh, please.  Zogby can’t be serious.  The poll Ziegler commissioned only polled Obama voters, and clearly intended to test their knowledge of the issues and events surrounding the campaign.  Now he wants us to believe that somehow his own poll blindsided him?  That’s absurd.  Zogby conducted the poll, asked the questions, and compiled the results.  At what point did this become a surprise to him?

Zogby certainly doesn’t have to take Ziegler’s business, but to claim that this project “slipped through the cracks” doesn’t do anything for Zogby’s credibility.  It looks as though Zogby didn’t care for the heat he got for partnering with Ziegler and now wants to make excuses for his decision to do so.

It’s too bad.  I think it would have been fun to see how that poll would have turned out.  I’m not entirely convinced that McCain voters would have done appreciably better, but at least we’d know.  Hot Air readers would have scored 100%, of course.