Obama's Data Team Totally Schooled Gallup
In the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, I have a short feature about how Google’s (GOOG) executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is investing millions in a new company with Dan Wagner and two dozen other veterans of the Obama campaign’s data analytics team. Schmidt was, not surprisingly, full of praise for the engineers, statisticians, and scientists whose work informed the strategy of a campaign that won by 5 million votes. But given the collaborative effort and many moving parts of a modern presidential campaign, it can be difficult to isolate the data team’s contribution. One great example, though, is the intricate mathematical models of swing states that Wagner and colleagues built that were meant to offer an alternative glimpse of the state of the race to public polls and even the campaign’s internal polls.
As David Plouffe, then a senior White House adviser, explained in my story, the data team’s models proved to be much steadier and more accurate than even the traditional tracking polls the campaign was also conducting. A number of Obama vets repeated this claim to me, so I asked them to provide some evidence to back it up, and they did. Here, for the first time, is a chart based on internal data that shows how the Obama campaign’s swing state model performed against the much maligned Gallup poll over the last several months of the race. This was the campaign’s daily “horserace” projection of the outcome, based on a nightly survey of 10,000 people.
To me, a few thing jump out: Gallup indicates that the selection of Paul Ryan as running mate hurt Mitt Romney, but Obama’s model really doesn’t; Gallup suggests, incredibly, that the “47 Percent” flap hurt Obama and moved the race back in Romney’s direction; and, biggest of all, Gallup shows a huge drop for Obama—really, an outright collapse—after the debacle of the first debate. At the time, Obama’s staffers were claiming to the press that, yes, their internal numbers showed the president’s weak showing had hurt his support, but that the fall was brief and quickly stabilized right about where his level of support had been all along. As a reporter, you never know if you’re just being spun when campaigns tell you this, because even if they really were collapsing the way Gallup suggests, they’d probably lie about it and say everything was fine, so as not to feed the panic. Based on this data, though, the Obama campaign looks to have been telling the truth.
One last bit of color I wanted to include in the original piece but couldn’t fit. David Axelrod, for one, had enough faith in his data guys that he was willing to bet his mustache on it. A week before the election, Axelrod wandered back to The Cave, where the analytics team worked, to ask point-blank if Obama would win Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. Newspapers were reporting surging crowds at Romney rallies and waning enthusiasm for Obama. Wagner said he thought he would. The next day, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Axelrod announced he would shave his mustache if Obama were to lose even one of those states. He won all three.
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-31/obamas-data-team-totally-schooled-gallup#r=rss
= new reply since forum marked as read
However, take solace that we get to gloat over President Obama's victory in the election. That burns the souls of Teabeggers forever and it can't be taken away! 
Now we need to kick butt in 2014 and elect another Democratic president in 2016! 
snip from your link..
"To me, a few thing(sic) jump out: Gallup indicates that the selection of Paul Ryan as running mate hurt Mitt Romney, but Obama’s model really doesn’t; Gallup suggests, incredibly, that the “47 Percent” flap hurt Obama and moved the race back in Romney’s direction; and, biggest of all, Gallup shows a huge drop for Obama—really, an outright collapse—after the debacle of the first debate. At the time, Obama’s staffers were claiming to the press that, yes, their internal numbers showed the president’s weak showing had hurt his support, but that the fall was brief and quickly stabilized right about where his level of support had been all along.
That's what I remember, too.
***snip
"...biggest of all, Gallup shows a huge drop for Obama—really, an outright collapse—after the debacle of the first debate. At the time, Obama’s staffers were claiming to the press that, yes, their internal numbers showed the president’s weak showing had hurt his support, but that the fall was brief and quickly stabilized right about where his level of support had been all along.
snip***
Yeah, PBO "lost North Carolina because of the 1st debate".. 
The polling methodology for Gallup and Rasmussen were suspicious throughout the last two months preceding the election.
I recall reading a different article a few months ago. IIRC, the Rasmussen poll calls a phone number and if nobody answers, then they immediately move to the next randomly chosen phone number and don't return back to that original number in their survey. They also conduct their polls within a tight four hour time frame. With those restrictions, their demographics become skewed and a larger percentage of older people are sampled than are in the actual voting population.
There was a similar flaw with the Gallup poll that is related to not allowing for adequate sampling of cell phones. With the high percentage of land lines contacted it also skews the demographics.
Aloha and thanks for your reply. We are creeping up to 4:20 in the Central time zone so it's about time for a catnip break. 
At this point there are 119 comments on that link if you want to scour the comments. Thanks for the rec.
Good luck with the studying. I'm thinking about taking some data management courses that will be offered online next spring at the University of Texas so I may have to get back into that mindset again. I got my BS in 1987 and a professional certification in insurance data management back in 2004, but it's been a while since I cracked a the text books with the expectation of taking an exam afterwards.
I'm glad the bluster over the North Korea situation has died down for awhile--it looks you called the situation correctly a few weeks ago.
