Gallup re-examines polling model – Washington Times

A model that missed too many likely voters, undercounted Obama supporters on the coasts and relied too heavily on the telephone book helped produce Gallup’s very public miscall of the 2012 presidential election, the venerable polling organization acknowledged in an internally produced report released to the public Tuesday.

Company officials said the firm was determined to do better in the wake of the 2012 debacle. While most pollsters declared President Obama the Election Day favorite, Gallup’s final pre-election estimate of the popular vote showed GOP nominee Mitt Romney with a narrow 49 percent to 48 percent lead over Mr. Obama, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points. In the end, Mr. Obama won 51 percent to 47 percent for Mr. Romney.

All pollsters take the raw data from respondents and adjust the numbers based on their estimates of who will actually turn up at the polls on Election Day. But Gallup concluded that, compared to most of its polling rivals, its adjustment model was skewed too much in Mr. Romney’s favor.

“Gallup’s four-point shift toward Romney, however, was greater than other polls’ shifts,” the report said. “And various combinations of the use or weighting of ‘likely voter’ questions would have changed Gallup’s final estimate of the presidential vote to be more in line with other firms’.”

Gallup’s surveys were a point of continuing controversy during the 2012 vote, with the Obama campaign and many private polling analysts questioning the company’s take on the race and its estimate of the likely composition of the 2012 electorate. Gallup chief pollster Frank Newport said Tuesday the firm will continue to investigate its methods and consider changes, centered on a number of areas identified by the post-vote studies…

via Gallup re-examines polling model – Washington Times.