Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll

[Clinton Crusader]

Sorry, dont have a link, this was sent to me via email
It's from The LeftCoaster
-----------------------

Friday :: Sep 17, 2004
Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning -
And Maybe All Of Theirs
This morning we awoke to the startling news that
despite a flurry of different polls this week all
showing a tied race, the venerable Gallup Poll, as
reported widely in the media (USA Today and CNN)
today, showed George W. Bush with a huge 55%-42% lead
over John Kerry amongst likely voters. The same Gallup
Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst
registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get
discouraged by these results, you should be more upset
that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these
polls and present a false, disappointing account of
the actual state of the race. Why?

Because the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation,
assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to
vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be
Democrat. You read that correctly. I asked Gallup, who
have been very courteous to my requests, to send me
this morning their sample breakdowns by party
identification for both their likely and registered
voter samples they use in these national and I suspect
their state polls. This is what I got back this
morning:

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September
13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Registered Voter Sample Party IDs – Same Poll
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 1022
GOP: 381 (38%)
Dem: 336 (33%)
Ind: 298 (30%)

In both polls, Gallup oversamples greatly for the GOP,
and undersamples for the Democrats. Worse yet, Gallup
just confirmed for me that this is the same sampling
methodology they have been using this whole election
season, for all their national and state polls. Gallup
says that "This (the breakdown between Reeps and Dems)
was not a constant. It can differ slightly between
surveys" in response to my latest email. Slightly?
Does that mean that in all of these national and state
polls we have seen from Gallup that they have
"slightly" varied between 36%-40% GOP and 32%-36%
Democrat? I already know from an email I got from
Gallup earlier in the week that in their suspicious
Wisconsin and Minnesota polls they seemingly
oversampled for the GOP and undersampled for the Dems.
For example in Wisconsin, in which they show Bush now
with a healthy lead, Gallup used a sample comprised of
38% GOP and 32% Democratic likely voters. In Minnesota
where Gallup shows Bush gaining a small lead, their
sample reflects a composition of 36% GOP and 34%
Democrat likely voters. How realistic is either
breakdown in those states on Election Day?

According to John Zogby himself:

If we look at the three last Presidential elections,
the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33%
Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race);
39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents
in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26%
Independents in 2000.

So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace
in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has not been higher
than 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup
trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP
bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst
registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the
sample down to levels they haven’t been at since a
strong three-way race in 1992?

Folks, unless Karl Rove can discourage the Democratic
base into staying home in droves and gets the GOP to
come out of the woodwork, there is no way in hell that
these or any other Gallup Poll is to be taken
seriously.

How likely is it that the Democrats will suffer a
seven-point difference against the GOP this November
or that the GOP will ever hit 40%?

Not very likely.

The real problem here is that Gallup is spreading a
false impression of this race. Through its 1992
partnership with two international media outlets (CNN
and USA Today), Gallup is telling voters and other
media by using badly-sampled polls that the GOP and
its candidates are more popular than they really are.
Given that Gallup’s CEO is a GOP donor, this should
not be a surprise. But it does require us to remind
the media, like Susan Page of USA Today, who wrote the
lead story on the poll in the morning paper, and other
members of the media who cite this poll today, that it
is based on a faulty sample composition of 40% GOP and
33% Democratic.
:kick:

[malatesta1137]

1. 5 days before election 2000

Gallup had Bush up 13 POINTS. The final result was Gore 48%, Bush 48%, with Gore ahead by 500,000 votes. Gallup exists to discourage liberals.

I rest my case.

By the way, what are you doing with that absurd electoral projection in your OWN post?

[sandersadu]

3. Kerry

It's not enough for us to talk about this.

Kerry's campaign (not necessarily Kerry, but somebody) must point this out. This is blatant manipulation, and worse it's whole goal is to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Kerry campaign has to refute this strongly and right away. We can't just complain about it in the blogosphere.

[Clinton Crusader]

5. thanks for reminding me

I keep forgetting to take that out. :thumbsup:
:kick:

[childslibrarian]

2. Thanks for explaining this

I knew Gallup was not reliable but now I know why...

[LTR]

4. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=832556&mesg_id=832556

[Nicholas_J]

6. More oversampling Republicans

Sort of like it works in Ohio. The polls in Ohio do not give equal weight by population region. Ohio has 77 percent of its population in the cities, where Kerry is has much much nmore support than Bush.

They give equal weight in their polls to the 23 percent of population that lives in the rural or suburban areas when doing polls so that the polls from Ohio are very skewed. When they do the polls they do not make 77 percent of their phone calls to the cities in Ohio, but call and equal number of people in each county, which gives a rather incorrect picture of the population.

Thanks. I have been postin all day suspicions that there wasn something that had changed in Gallop that was causing them to for some odd reason to favor BUsh. The fact that the C.E.O. is a major Bush contributor has cleared that up big time.