By Andy Sullivan | Reuters â Sat, Oct 20, 2012
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The election 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.
As most surveys show Obama and Romney locked in a virtual dead heat, Gallup finds that the Republican would win by a comfortable 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 stretching back to 1936, Gallup is one of the most prestigious names in the business and its outlier status has other polling experts scratching their heads.
"They're just so out of kilter at the moment," said Simon Jackman, a Stanford University political science professor and author of a book on polling. "Either they're doing something really wacky or the other 18 pollsters out there are colluding, or something."
Obama pollster Joel Benenson called the Gallup survey an "extreme outlier" and said its formula to determine likely voters created a bias against Obama supporters. "Gallup's data is once again far out of line with other public pollsters," he wrote in a memo on Monday.
Republican strategist Karl Rove pointed out on Thursday that no candidate who has ever polled more than 50 percent in the Gallup poll at this point in a presidential race has gone on to lose the election. As it happens, Gallup had Romney at 51 percent that day.
http://news.yahoo.com/other-polls-show-tight-race-gallup-stands-apart-020811767.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The election 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.
As most surveys show Obama and Romney locked in a virtual dead heat, Gallup finds that the Republican would win by a comfortable 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 stretching back to 1936, Gallup is one of the most prestigious names in the business and its outlier status has other polling experts scratching their heads.
"They're just so out of kilter at the moment," said Simon Jackman, a Stanford University political science professor and author of a book on polling. "Either they're doing something really wacky or the other 18 pollsters out there are colluding, or something."
Obama pollster Joel Benenson called the Gallup survey an "extreme outlier" and said its formula to determine likely voters created a bias against Obama supporters. "Gallup's data is once again far out of line with other public pollsters," he wrote in a memo on Monday.
Republican strategist Karl Rove pointed out on Thursday that no candidate who has ever polled more than 50 percent in the Gallup poll at this point in a presidential race has gone on to lose the election. As it happens, Gallup had Romney at 51 percent that day.
http://news.yahoo.com/other-polls-show-tight-race-gallup-stands-apart-020811767.html
