Is this the same Gallup that in 2004 a day before the election decided to give Kerry the numbers so it could look like it was tied…..yea right…I remember that very well

I don’t trust Gallup when Bambi is up or when he is down..

Rasmussen is a great poll. So Bambi is up 1…yea so what, that is to be expected, this week was not very good for McCain

staedtler on September 20, 2008 at 2:59 PM

Gallup in the past adjusted samples and other aspects of the poll, which allows the poll to give a desired result. An analysis of the daily polls *could* show similar behavior, in an attempt to create the illusion of competence for Obama.

Gore won the exit polls, as did Kerry, but both lost the actual election. Add the Bradley effect and Obama’s consistent underperformance compared to polls in the primaries (except in NC), and Obama needs a huge lead in polls to actually be competitive in the election on Nov. 4.

Right_of_Attila on September 20, 2008 at 3:50 PM

I thought so! Gallup is messing with the weighting on their polls. A comment on a blog titled “Union Political Tricks Behind Palin’s Troopergate Issue – Updated” analyzed the detailed data from recent Gallup polls.

Here is the comment:

Terryeon 20 Sep 2008 at 11:52 am

This is off topic, Aj, but I wondered if you had seen this. It is an excerpt from a post by DJ Drummond at Wizbang:

So, put it all together, and in the past week Obama has stayed steady or lost support in every party identification group, yet Gallup says his overall support went up four points. And McCain stayed steady or went up in every party identification group, yet we are supposed to accept the claim that his overall support went down by four points? Anyone have an answer for how that is even possible?

Well, actually I do. There is one, and only one, possible way that such a thing can happen mathematically. And that way, is that Gallup made major changes to the political affiliation weighting from the last week to now. Gallup has significantly increased the proportional weight of Democrat response and reduced the weight of Republican response. Bear in mind that this assumes that people change the foundation of their political opinion like a showgirl changes costumes, which has no scientific basis or historical support whatsoever. As I said earlier, the Gallup Organization is very much a professional polling agency, who tries their level best to gauge the national mood. That, after all, is why I chose to use their poll for my examination. I could do the same thing with any other of the major published polls, and I can tell you straight-up that I would find the same practice going on everywhere. But just because something is popular, does not validate it as a scientific method. Rather than report the rising and falling levels of support for Obama and McCain with constant party identification weighting, the Gallup and other polls are shifting the party weights over time, which pretty explains how the ‘bounce’ happens for each convention. When the Democrats held their convention, the polls increased the weight of Democrats and lowered the Republican response, and when the Republicans had their convention, the polls gave the Republicans more weight. That’s why Palin made such an immediate difference in the polls; the Liberals were not all that impressed with her, but the Republicans were happy and with a bigger share of the weight their response was magnified. I can’t prove it, since the Gallup people do not invite me into their strategy meetings, but I think somewhere they are weighting the party ID by the mood as they see it. The problem there, is that such weighting is still very subjective, and what’s more it fails to consider that someone may consider themselves a member of one party with respect to the House and Senate races, but something else entirely when it comes to voting for the President. The state of Oklahoma, for example, is a very Democratic place, but it’s pretty solid for McCain, just as it was for Bush. So weighting a presidential poll for party identification on the basis of how they think someone will vote for Congress, is going to miss the mark.

Anyway, going back to my earlier piece on party weighting, if we go back and look at the historical track record for the last ten years in terms of self-identified party affiliation from actual exit polls, we see a clear standard of weights; 38.4% Democrat, 35.8% Republican, 26.0% Independent. If we then work them out to fill the liberal/moderate/conservative slots used by Gallup, the following weights have historical validity and may be used as a constant for poll responses:

Liberal Democrat 9%
Moderate Democrat 16%
Conservative Democrat 13%
Independent 26%
Liberal/Moderate Republican 23%
Conservative Republican 13%

If we apply those weights to the poll response, here is what happens to the Gallup polling responses:

August 21: Obama 39.94%, McCain 43.43%, Undecided 16.63%
August 28: Obama 40.04%, McCain 43.60%, Undecided 16.36%
September 4: Obama 41.06%, McCain 41.77%, Undecided 17.17%
September 11: Obama 42.04%, McCain 42.45%, Undecided 15.51%
September 18: Obama 39.62%, McCain 45.71%, Undecided 14.67%

Assuming this data is correct:
With a constant weight for party identification, Obama LOST ground during Sept 11-18, and McCain GAINED ground.

This looks like clear manipulation of poll results to match an agenda. Then the results get adjusted to try to be accurate – in order to maintain credibility to manipulate future elections.

Right_of_Attila on September 20, 2008 at 4:29 PM