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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUSA Today drops Gallup as its pollster
From the Guardian:
USA Today has decided not to renew a polling contract with Gallup that dates back to 1992. We cannot say at this point why USA Today dropped Gallup, but one cannot help but wonder whether Gallup's poor track record has something to do with it.
In case you don't remember, Gallup continuously and incorrectly showed the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, leading during the final month of the 2012 election. Its final poll had Romney leading by a point five points off the eventual margin of his defeat. The reasons for these errors can be traced back to too tight a likely voter model and an underestimation of minority share of the electorate.
If 2012 was Gallup's only error, I might be more willing to forgive. The fact is that Gallup has only pegged the correct winner in 60% of elections since 1976 which is not much better than a coin flip. That record drops to 25% since 2000. In four elections since 1976 in which the election margin was less than five points, Gallup has not called the right winner.
The fact is, however, Gallup's presidential polling miscues are only the tip of the iceberg. After an extended investigation by Mark Blumenthal, into Gallup's long-standing racial imbalance in its adult sample (which is supposed to reflect the adult population), Gallup claimed it was weighting its sample to the cell and telephone population. Of course, not everyone has a telephone. Gallup said it was making "judgement calls" and, regrettably, stuck by its methods.
It was only by October that Gallup revealed new, "slight" weight changes, when everyone else was showing something different than it was. The fact that Gallup altered its methods in the middle of the campaign, and long after its flaws had been pointed out, had to make even Gallup's most ardent defenders flinch. Bizarrely, Gallup decided that it should change its adult sample, but not its samples of registered or likely voters.
And yet, the most troubling accusations lobbed Gallup's way came when the justice department filed charges against it. The suit, brought in 2012, alleges that Gallup submitted $13m in false claims to the US government, by inflating the cost of polling work. These charges include milking the US mint, state department and other organizations.
USA Today, with the highest print circulation in the United States, only added to Gallup's ability to spread bad data. Gallup made USA Today look bad, as the only major news organization to be associated with a pollster that had Romney winning in the final week of the campaign.
So even if none of Gallup's faults I have mentioned here had anything to with USA Today's decision to break with Gallup, USA Today and everyone interested in good data is now better off.
I'm wishful that Gallup will straighten itself out. Either way, there are better polling companies out there at the moment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/19/usa-today-drops-gallup-polls
Mitt Romney didn't win the presidential election despite what Gallup predicted. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)malaise
(267,812 posts)Rec
Get thee to the greatest page
Downtown Hound
(12,618 posts)has known and talked about for years. Gallup has sucked for a long time and yet newspapers have consistently used it as the gold standard in polling. Leave it to our limp-dicked media to finally get around to doing something they should have done more than ten years ago.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)and honest. having a major outlet drop them is very bad.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)stlsaxman
(9,236 posts)just watch- they'll go with Rassmuffin.
aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)Cynicus Emeritus
(172 posts)It used to be used regularly as the gold standard to compare outcomes at polling places. I don't hear much about it. I still believe it is necessary.