Gallup goes it alone as polling figures show a Romney win

Sunday 21 October 2012

THE election battle between president Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney looks like it will be a knuckle-biter – unless you go by one of the United States' most respected public opinion polls.

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by Andy Sullivan in Washington

While most surveys show Obama and Romney locked close to a dead heat, Gallup finds the Republican would win by six percentage points if the election were held today.

Questions about the gap between Gallup's findings and those of other pollsters is the latest fuss this election season over polling methodology as partisan passions come to a boil in the heated final weeks before the November 6 presidential contest.

With a record of correctly predicting all but three of the 19 presidential races since 1936, Gallup is one of the most prestigious polls in the business and its outlier status has other polling experts scratching their heads.Simon Jackman, a Stanford University political science professor and author of a book on polling, said: "Either they're doing something really wacky or the other 18 pollsters out there are colluding, or something."Gallup's editor-in-chief, Frank Newport, said he didn't know why his results didn't line up with others, but nor did he seem unnerved by the disparity. He said: "We try to keep our eyes on the boat and do the best job possible. We're going over some additional tweaks with our methodologists to make sure we're on top of it."When Obama opened up a wide lead in polls last month, Republicans accused researchers of interviewing too many Democrats. Those complaints evaporated when Romney surged ahead after his strong performance in the first debate.Now, the Obama campaign is questioning the validity of Gallup's methods after it released a poll last week that showed Romney leading among likely voters in the handful of battleground states that will decide the election. Obama pollster Joel Benenson called the Gallup survey an "extreme outlier". Republican strategist Karl Rove pointed out on Thursday that no candidate who has ever polled more than 50% in the Gallup poll at this point in a presidential race has gone on to lose the election. Gallup had Romney at 51% that day.As of Friday afternoon, Gallup's daily tracking poll of likely voters had Romney leading Obama by six percentage points, 51% to 45%. The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll had Obama leading by three points on Friday and for much of this week. A Public Policy Polling daily survey had Obama leading by one point, Rand put him ahead by three points and Rasmussen showed the two candidates to be tied."Firms don't like being outliers – it causes a lot of self-doubt," said Harvard University political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere. "It's OK if you're wrong if everybody else is wrong with you. It's not OK to be wrong if you're all alone."

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Gallup goes it alone as polling figures show a Romney win

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