Nbadan
09-29-2004, 05:33 AM
Could this be the beginning of the 2004 Presidential fix?
The well-financed liberal advocacy group, MoveOn.org, inserted the issue into the campaign by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times which accuses Gallup of "refusing to fix a longstanding problem with their likely voter methodology" and criticized two media outlets, CNN and USA Today, each of which pays Gallup for the polls and the right to release the results.
MoveOn's ad argues: "Gallup's methodology has predicted lately that Republican turnout on Election Day is likely to exceed Democrats' by six to eight percentage points. But exit polls show otherwise: in each of the last two Presidential elections, Democratic turnout exceeded Republican by four to five points. That discrepancy alone can account for nearly all of Bush's phantom 14-point lead" reported by Gallup a couple of weeks ago.
Often, CNN covers contentious issues like this with sound bites from both sides, treating both positions roughly equally. But not this time. After all, a blow to Gallup's reputation as a reliable polling service is also a blow to CNN. So, on the network's "Inside Politics" this afternoon, it dealt with the issue this way:
Anchor Judy Woodruff began by briefly outlining MoveOn's complaint: "Recent polls have shown George W. Bush leading John Kerry and MoveOn.org claims Gallup's polling techniques exaggerate Republican support." Woodruff then gave Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport almost three minutes to respond, uninterrupted, to the charges. Naturally, Newport defended Gallup's methodology, but essentially asked viewers to take it on faith that he knows what he's doing.
End of segment.
With that nifty sign-off, CNN implicitly confirmed a criticism of itself that was leveled in the MoveOn ad: the charge that CNN winds up "acting as unquestioning promotional partners , rather than as critical journalists." For this was not the journalism of a disinterested party with no ax to grind. This was PR.
Campaign Desk.org (http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000963.asp)
Also, from another article...
In recent weeks, complaints about the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup polls had mostly been aired in "blogs," or online diaries, on the Internet. Tuesday, the issue spilled into the "mainstream media." MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, paid $68,000 to run a full-page ad in The New York Times. The ad's headline: "Gallup-ing to the Right. Why does America's top pollster keep getting it wrong?"
GOP REPRESENTED IN GREATER NUMBERS
The Gallup Poll asks voters to identify their party affiliation after they tell pollsters whom they would vote for if the election were that day. How the party affiliations compare with poll results among likely voters:
Poll
Republican respondents Independent respondents Democratic respondents GOP advantage Bush support Kerry support
Jan. 9-11 39% 30% 31% 8% 55% 43%
Jan. 29-Feb. 1 36% 30% 35% 1% 46% 53%
Feb. 6-8 37% 31% 32% 5% 49% 48%
Feb. 16-17 32% 33% 36% -4% 43% 55%
March 5-7 35% 26% 40% -5% 44% 52%
March 26-28 44% 23% 32% 12% 51% 47%
April 5-8* 41% 24% 34% 7% 48% 45%
April 16-18 41% 25% 34% 7% 51% 46%
May 2-4* 38% 23% 38% 0% 48% 49%
May 7-9 37% 30% 33% 4% 48% 47%
May 21-23 38% 26% 34% 4% 47% 49%
June 3-6* 36% 27% 36% 0% 44% 50%
June 21-23 36% 28% 37% -1% 49% 48%
July 8-11 38% 24% 38% 0% 46% 50%
July 19-21 41% 23% 35% 6% 47% 49%
July 30-Aug. 1 42% 23% 34% 8% 51% 47%
Aug. 9-11* 40% 25% 34% 6% 50% 47%
Aug. 23-25 38% 29% 32% 6% 50% 47%
Sept. 3-5 40% 27% 33% 7% 52% 45%
Sept. 13-15* 40% 27% 33% 7% 55% 42%
Sept. 24-26 43% 25% 31% 12% 52% 44%
Source: Gallup Polls; those marked with an asterisk were conducted independent of USA TODAY and CNN
The ad goes on to say that "two media outlets, CNN and USA TODAY, bear special responsibility" because "they pay for many of Gallup's surveys."
At issue: Whether too many Republicans end up being counted as "likely voters" in Gallup's polls. In the past six USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup polls this year, about 40% of the likely voters in the surveys said they considered themselves to be Republicans. By one measure, that's higher than might be expected: Exit polls after the past three presidential elections showed that about 35% of voters in those years said they were Republicans.
Peter Schurman, MoveOn.org's director, said Tuesday that Gallup "should admit its mistake and correct it by using samples that more closely reflect" likely turnout.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said the critics don't understand the science behind the polls. "This issue has been the subject of intense scholarly discussion and years of research. We're confident in what we're doing," he said.
Actually, it's what Gallup doesn't do that is at the heart of the debate. The polling firm does not adjust its "pool" of voters to add or subtract Republicans or Democrats in an effort to mirror those parties' estimated make-ups.
Among the reasons Gallup doesn't try to do that:
• It believes there are no reliable data on which to estimate exactly how many Republicans or Democrats there are in the country. Some states, for example, don't require voters to register by party affiliation. Basing an adjustment on previous year's exit polls, "means you're 'weighting' one poll based on the results of another poll, which has its own built-in sampling error," Newport said.
• It believes party affiliation "is an attitude, not a demographic trait" and that voters can change their minds about which party they identify with more than once during an election year, Newport said. That would explain, he said, why the number of people who identified themselves as Republicans went down during this year's Democratic primaries — when Kerry and his competitors were in the news.
Most polling firms use the same methods as Gallup when identifying party affiliations. Among those are the surveys done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Andrew Kohut, the center's director, said in a statement last week that "important shifts in voter sentiment" could be missed if pollsters tried to apply rigid party formulas to results.
But not all pollsters agree with Gallup's approach. John Zogby is CEO of the independent polling firm Zogby International.
He adjusts the voter pools in his surveys to mirror party affiliations expressed in earlier exit polls. "I am one of the heretics in the polling industry," he said Tuesday. He maintains that "there are variations in people's party affiliations, but they aren't changing much daily, weekly or even monthly."
Critics say the debate over Gallup's work is important because the media's reporting of polls can affect the dynamics of a campaign. "We need the most accurate information possible. Next week the stories could be 'Kerry's surging in the polls,' but would that be true?" asks Markos Moulitsas Zniga, who's dailykos.com blog is a popular site for liberals.
Norman, however, said that Gallup's "overall record since 1988 on presidential elections, senate races and the national vote on congressional elections is as good as anyone's. And their record in the 2002 elections was clearly the best."
Who is Gallup kidding? We have shown that for the last three years, Harris and Zogby have been the most accurate Presidential polls.
The well-financed liberal advocacy group, MoveOn.org, inserted the issue into the campaign by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times which accuses Gallup of "refusing to fix a longstanding problem with their likely voter methodology" and criticized two media outlets, CNN and USA Today, each of which pays Gallup for the polls and the right to release the results.
MoveOn's ad argues: "Gallup's methodology has predicted lately that Republican turnout on Election Day is likely to exceed Democrats' by six to eight percentage points. But exit polls show otherwise: in each of the last two Presidential elections, Democratic turnout exceeded Republican by four to five points. That discrepancy alone can account for nearly all of Bush's phantom 14-point lead" reported by Gallup a couple of weeks ago.
Often, CNN covers contentious issues like this with sound bites from both sides, treating both positions roughly equally. But not this time. After all, a blow to Gallup's reputation as a reliable polling service is also a blow to CNN. So, on the network's "Inside Politics" this afternoon, it dealt with the issue this way:
Anchor Judy Woodruff began by briefly outlining MoveOn's complaint: "Recent polls have shown George W. Bush leading John Kerry and MoveOn.org claims Gallup's polling techniques exaggerate Republican support." Woodruff then gave Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport almost three minutes to respond, uninterrupted, to the charges. Naturally, Newport defended Gallup's methodology, but essentially asked viewers to take it on faith that he knows what he's doing.
End of segment.
With that nifty sign-off, CNN implicitly confirmed a criticism of itself that was leveled in the MoveOn ad: the charge that CNN winds up "acting as unquestioning promotional partners , rather than as critical journalists." For this was not the journalism of a disinterested party with no ax to grind. This was PR.
Campaign Desk.org (http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000963.asp)
Also, from another article...
In recent weeks, complaints about the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup polls had mostly been aired in "blogs," or online diaries, on the Internet. Tuesday, the issue spilled into the "mainstream media." MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, paid $68,000 to run a full-page ad in The New York Times. The ad's headline: "Gallup-ing to the Right. Why does America's top pollster keep getting it wrong?"
GOP REPRESENTED IN GREATER NUMBERS
The Gallup Poll asks voters to identify their party affiliation after they tell pollsters whom they would vote for if the election were that day. How the party affiliations compare with poll results among likely voters:
Poll
Republican respondents Independent respondents Democratic respondents GOP advantage Bush support Kerry support
Jan. 9-11 39% 30% 31% 8% 55% 43%
Jan. 29-Feb. 1 36% 30% 35% 1% 46% 53%
Feb. 6-8 37% 31% 32% 5% 49% 48%
Feb. 16-17 32% 33% 36% -4% 43% 55%
March 5-7 35% 26% 40% -5% 44% 52%
March 26-28 44% 23% 32% 12% 51% 47%
April 5-8* 41% 24% 34% 7% 48% 45%
April 16-18 41% 25% 34% 7% 51% 46%
May 2-4* 38% 23% 38% 0% 48% 49%
May 7-9 37% 30% 33% 4% 48% 47%
May 21-23 38% 26% 34% 4% 47% 49%
June 3-6* 36% 27% 36% 0% 44% 50%
June 21-23 36% 28% 37% -1% 49% 48%
July 8-11 38% 24% 38% 0% 46% 50%
July 19-21 41% 23% 35% 6% 47% 49%
July 30-Aug. 1 42% 23% 34% 8% 51% 47%
Aug. 9-11* 40% 25% 34% 6% 50% 47%
Aug. 23-25 38% 29% 32% 6% 50% 47%
Sept. 3-5 40% 27% 33% 7% 52% 45%
Sept. 13-15* 40% 27% 33% 7% 55% 42%
Sept. 24-26 43% 25% 31% 12% 52% 44%
Source: Gallup Polls; those marked with an asterisk were conducted independent of USA TODAY and CNN
The ad goes on to say that "two media outlets, CNN and USA TODAY, bear special responsibility" because "they pay for many of Gallup's surveys."
At issue: Whether too many Republicans end up being counted as "likely voters" in Gallup's polls. In the past six USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup polls this year, about 40% of the likely voters in the surveys said they considered themselves to be Republicans. By one measure, that's higher than might be expected: Exit polls after the past three presidential elections showed that about 35% of voters in those years said they were Republicans.
Peter Schurman, MoveOn.org's director, said Tuesday that Gallup "should admit its mistake and correct it by using samples that more closely reflect" likely turnout.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said the critics don't understand the science behind the polls. "This issue has been the subject of intense scholarly discussion and years of research. We're confident in what we're doing," he said.
Actually, it's what Gallup doesn't do that is at the heart of the debate. The polling firm does not adjust its "pool" of voters to add or subtract Republicans or Democrats in an effort to mirror those parties' estimated make-ups.
Among the reasons Gallup doesn't try to do that:
• It believes there are no reliable data on which to estimate exactly how many Republicans or Democrats there are in the country. Some states, for example, don't require voters to register by party affiliation. Basing an adjustment on previous year's exit polls, "means you're 'weighting' one poll based on the results of another poll, which has its own built-in sampling error," Newport said.
• It believes party affiliation "is an attitude, not a demographic trait" and that voters can change their minds about which party they identify with more than once during an election year, Newport said. That would explain, he said, why the number of people who identified themselves as Republicans went down during this year's Democratic primaries — when Kerry and his competitors were in the news.
Most polling firms use the same methods as Gallup when identifying party affiliations. Among those are the surveys done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Andrew Kohut, the center's director, said in a statement last week that "important shifts in voter sentiment" could be missed if pollsters tried to apply rigid party formulas to results.
But not all pollsters agree with Gallup's approach. John Zogby is CEO of the independent polling firm Zogby International.
He adjusts the voter pools in his surveys to mirror party affiliations expressed in earlier exit polls. "I am one of the heretics in the polling industry," he said Tuesday. He maintains that "there are variations in people's party affiliations, but they aren't changing much daily, weekly or even monthly."
Critics say the debate over Gallup's work is important because the media's reporting of polls can affect the dynamics of a campaign. "We need the most accurate information possible. Next week the stories could be 'Kerry's surging in the polls,' but would that be true?" asks Markos Moulitsas Zniga, who's dailykos.com blog is a popular site for liberals.
Norman, however, said that Gallup's "overall record since 1988 on presidential elections, senate races and the national vote on congressional elections is as good as anyone's. And their record in the 2002 elections was clearly the best."
Who is Gallup kidding? We have shown that for the last three years, Harris and Zogby have been the most accurate Presidential polls.