John Zogby did not achieve a reputation for polling prescience by asking Americans whether the woolly mammoth ought to be brought back from extinction by present-day scientists. But that question does appear in “The Way We’ll Be,” Mr. Zogby’s blue-sky assessment of our prospects for the future.

While some of his political and marketing questions are asked straightforwardly, Mr. Zogby occasionally cloaks his inquiries in figurative mammoth fur. Why? In order to assess public attitudes indirectly even at the risk of courting extreme whimsy. Among the many things on which Mr. Zogby prides himself and his polling firm, Zogby International, is an ability to adapt to changing times by rethinking the way Zogby surveys are conducted.

The results on the mammoth issue do not appear to be especially interesting. While Mr. Zogby discovers that conservatives oppose resuscitating extinct species more than liberals do, he also learns that no part of the population especially likes this prospect. But 18- to 29-year-olds align themselves so closely with liberals, moderates and independents on this issue that Mr. Zogby uses this grain of evidence to prognosticate. Perhaps the red state-blue state political model is becoming meaningless, he suggests. Perhaps we face “the birth of a third party that will spell the end of two-party hegemony in American politics,” he writes, “a coalition not of the willing, but of those willing to listen.” To Mr. Zogby, who has tracked the political stalemates of the past decade with unusual numerical accuracy and decries the current age of “grinding political meanness,” a change like that “would be little short of revolutionary.”