Blog For Arizona

Gallup Polls Intentionally Skewed

Concerned that the USA Today or CNN poll you just heard about shows Bush way out in front? Confused as to why other polls show a neck and neck race again now that the GOP Convention has faded in people's memories? Wonder no longer.

It seem Gallup wants it that way, so they are oversampling GOP voters. Yep. Instead of pegging the proportion of Dems, GOP, and Indeps to historical voting trends, they have made the arbitrary assumption that 40% of voters in the Presidential election will be GOP, and only 33% will be Dems. This is despite the fact that the figures were 39% Dems and 35% GOP in 2000. So the polls are off because the pollsters are asking a lot more Repubs for their opinion than is reasonable.

Why would they do this? Well, let's start with the fact that Gallup's CEO is a GOP donor. Actually, I think we can stop there, too.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 9/17/2004 01:10:00 PM