October 02, 2011 05:26 PM UTC

Haruspicy With John Zogby

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• by: Colorado Pols

Have you ever wondered if maybe pollsters really are just making it up–or at least taking tiny slivers of the electorate and absurdly calling them “representative?” Pollster John Zogby:

The Daily Number: 62%

In a match-up among all likely voters, 62 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds say they would vote for Texas Rep. Ron Paul against President Obama. While this is a small subsample of only 63 young voters, [Pols emphasis] the result pushes Paul’s support among the larger group of 18- to 29-year-olds to a lead of 44 percent to 41 percent over Obama. In this mid-September poll, Paul is down only 3 points against Obama (42 to 39 percent), and Paul, the libertarian purist, actually leads Obama among independents (43 to 34 percent)…

What are we seeing here? No doubt there is a considerable amount of angst among the youngest voters, who have real fears about their economic present, let alone their future. But has this group, which voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008, learned to simply distrust any institution that could control their own fate? Is there a “libertarian” boomlet going on?

For starters, can somebody find a link to the poll Zogby is referring to? We can’t find it anywhere in this post, and Zogby doesn’t reveal who conducted the poll–presumably his own shop–or methodology, except to say it was conducted in “mid-September.”

So taking Zogby’s word for it, maybe there’s a “libertarian boomlet” underway among the very youngest voters, one that skews longshot perennial candidate Rep. Ron Paul’s numbers for 18-24 year-olds dramatically from the larger sample of 18-29 year-olds.

We’re inclined to think that’s just what 63 kids in one poll said, not enough to be a representative sample of anything, but we understand that dose of reality might get in the way of a lovely free-ranging monologue about “distrusting institutions” and “libertarian boomlets”–and, of course, the positively fantastical idea that “even Ron Paul” might beat Barack Obama. Which, for all the talk about “distrusting any institution,” is what this whole silly rhetorical exercise is all about.