Gallup Polls Cannot Be Trusted

Recent Gallup polls have shown George W. Bush far ahead of Democratic challenger John Kerry. What makes this interesting is that no other polls show anything like this. What's going on? Well, as it turns out Gallup polls are constructed in such a way as to benefit Republicans. Accident or deliberate bias?

The Left Coaster explains:

Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has not been higher than 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven’t been at since a strong three-way race in 1992... Folks, unless Karl Rove can discourage the Democratic base into staying home in droves and gets the GOP to come out of the woodwork, there is no way in hell that these or any other Gallup Poll are to be taken seriously.

Gallup is spreading a false impression of this race. Through its 1992 partnership with two international media outlets (CNN and USA Today), Gallup is telling voters and other media by using badly-sampled polls that the GOP and its candidates are more popular than they really are. Given that Gallup’s CEO is a GOP donor, this should not be a surprise.

You'll need to read the Steve Soto's full post to see what the breakdowns are, but it's clear that Gallup is using numbers that have no basis in reality if you go by voting records from past presidential elections. Perhaps they can make the argument that things have changed dramatically, but just how likely is that? Unless some really solid data can be provided that shows that their sample sizes are reasonable, there is just no good reason for giving any credence to Gallup poll results.

Thanks to Ed on the forum for pointing this out...

Read More:

• 2004 Elections
• Election Polls
• George W. Bush
• John Kerry
• War on Terrorism