Gallup gives up the horse race As pollsters confront unprecedented obstacles, the biggest name in the business backs away. By Steven Shepard
Gallup has been the country's gold standard for horse-race election polling ever since its legendary founder, George Gallup, predicted Franklin Roosevelt's landslide reelection in 1936.
But after a bruising 2012 cycle, in which its polls were farther off than most of its competitors, Gallup told POLITICO it isn't planning any polls for the presidential primary horse race this cycle. And, even following an internal probe into what went wrong last time around, Gallup won't commit to tracking the general election next year.
It's a stunning move for an organization that built its reputation on predicting the winners of presidential elections. But it comes at a time of unusual tumult in the polling world. Other top-level brands like the nonprofit Pew Research Center have yet to poll the horse race, and still others have expressed concern about the accuracy of polling at a time when fewer people are reachable or willing to talk to pollsters.
Gallup had vowed to examine its methods closely after 2012. And after a lengthy post-mortem, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport promised to be ready “when the next presidential election” arrived. But so far, Gallup hasn’t been willing to put its methods to the test.
Newport told POLITICO that Gallup has shifted its resources into understanding issues facing voters — and won’t be following the primary horse races, other than asking about how Americans feel about the individual candidates.
“We believe to put our time and money and brainpower into understanding the issues and priorities is where we can most have an impact,” he said.
But it’s a far cry from this time four years ago, when Gallup had already conducted 11 different surveys of Republicans’ presidential preferences.
Its horse-race polls have been missed this time around, because the number of candidates on the Republican side and the ways in which news organizations have attempted to winnow the field for debates have made polls more consequential than they’ve ever been.
“In this case, the problem is both cause and effect,” said Cliff Zukin, a Rutgers professor and the former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. “The difficulty in doing this well has caused major players to not participate. That means there’s even less legitimacy because people who know how to do this right aren’t doing it.”
Gallup's reputation is greater than that of any other polling operation, though its track record was never flawless. It was among the outfits that missed Harry Truman's victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948, but 12 years later it won plaudits for nailing John F. Kennedy's razor-thin win over Richard Nixon.
In 2012, many national polls underestimated President Barack Obama’s standing leading up to election, but Gallup’s failure was especially visible because the Obama campaign had pushed back publicly against Gallup’s surveys. When Gallup, in mid-October of that year, released a poll showing Obama and Mitt Romney tied in the swing states, the Obama campaign — led by Joel Benenson, Obama's lead pollster — went so far as to question Gallup's methodology in a public memorandum.
Gallup’s final survey showed Romney leading Obama by 1 point — 4.9 points off from the final result, in which Obama prevailed by 3.9 points. It also misidentified the winner. That led to a lengthy and expensive effort by Gallup to retool its methodology, a process the pollster described back in 2013 as aimed at the next presidential election.
Gallup concluded that major parts of its methodology — using live interviewers to call land lines and cellphones, while screening out people who hadn't voted in recent elections — were still the preferred means to conduct election polls. That review continued through 2014, when Gallup conducted polls of the national generic congressional ballot for internal use, which Newport and his colleagues “analyzed very carefully,” he said Tuesday.
Why is the media citing polling, and determining who is on the debate stage based on polling, when the "gold standard" in polling(Gallup) has refused to poll this year's presidential election because they don't trust the accuracy of the polling?
Why is the media citing polling, and determining who is on the debate stage based on polling, when the "gold standard" in polling(Gallup) has refused to poll this year's presidential election because they don't trust the accuracy of the polling?
No, they don't trust the accuracy of THIER polling after the debacle in 2012 and they don't want to go through it again.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Anecdotal evidence that polling isn't accurate. So far, I've received polling phone calls 4 times this year. The first time they asked me the likeliness of me voting - I responded "not likely" - that was then end of the phone survey. The next phone call I received, they asked me the same question, I responed 50/50 for likelihood of voting - same result, end of phone survey. The next two phone surveys I answered, I told them I was a "likely voter" and I gave them answer completely opposite of what I would ever vote(if I chose to participate in the charade).
What is the methodology of these pollsters, and how does it figure my answers into their methodology equation? Not only are my responses completely opposite of who I would ever vote for, but I'm not even going to vote.
Anecdotal evidence that polling isn't accurate. So far, I've received polling phone calls 4 times this year. The first time they asked me the likeliness of me voting - I responded "not likely" - that was then end of the phone survey. The next phone call I received, they asked me the same question, I responed 50/50 for likelihood of voting - same result, end of phone survey. The next two phone surveys I answered, I told them I was a "likely voter" and I gave them answer completely opposite of what I would ever vote(if I chose to participate in the charade).
What is the methodology of these pollsters, and how does it figure my answers into their methodology equation? Not only are my responses completely opposite of who I would ever vote for, but I'm not even going to vote.
Professional Pollers allow for the IDIOT FACTOR and deduct 2% for people like Cicero.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
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