Useless Poll Alert

At the end of last week Zogby released a poll which showed John McCain ahead of either Democratic candidate by about 4 or 5 points. This is was newsworthy since most recent polls have shown the race much closer, and usually with the Democrats ahead. Here was the result of the poll:

McCain 45%, Clinton 39%
McCain 44%, Obama 39%

Now this poll jumped out at me for two reasons. First, as I mentioned above, most polls taken recently have shown a very different picture. Second, this poll had both Democrats below 40%, something I hadn't seen in any poll in the past month. So, why the strange results? Because I, like many news outlets, failed to report the full results from that Zogby poll. Here's the full results:

McCain 45%, Clinton 39%, Nader 6%
McCain 44%, Clinton 38%, Nader 5%

That's right. Apparently Zogby thinks that if the election were held today, Ralph Nader would pull over 5% of the national vote. Is that so unreasonable?

In a word: Yes.
In thirty-four words: Ralph Nader is more likely to wake up one morning to find that he has grown a second head (though, thankfully, not a second ego) than he is to win 5% of the vote.

Ralph Nader has run for President in each of the past three elections, never coming close to 5%. In fact, even in 2000, when Nader's base (young, white, upper-middle class liberals) was feeling a little left out of the Gore/Bush contest, Nader could only manage 2.7% of the vote. Last time, in 2004, Nader actually did worse than he did the first time, back in 1996, when he wasn't even really campaigning. Yes folks, in 2004 Ralph Nader managed a whopping 0.38% of the vote. For him to pull 5% in 2008, he would have to score 13 times as many voters as he did just four short years ago. Even if Ralph Nader goes out and captures Osama Bin Laden himself with his bare hands and then, for an encore, singlehandedly turns the US economy around by inventing some kind of amazing subprime-mess-fixing-machine, he still might not get to 5%.

So, what does this mean for that Zogby poll? It means we should take that poll, and any poll that actively offers Ralph Nader as an option to respondents, with a truckload of rock salt.