Gallup: Obama Up By 8
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, PollsMuch like in the Rasmussen poll, Obama holds steady and McCain loses one.
However, in Gallup’s expanded likely voter model, Obama loses one and McCain gains one…
Of note, likely voter models are usually more reliable than registered voter models because, well, likely voters actually vote.
Here’s Gallup with an explanation between the two “likely” models…
The vote intentions of this pool of likely voters, measured in the final survey before an election, typically provides a more accurate representation of the final popular vote outcome than is accorded by the polled vote patterns of all registered voters. For example, in 2004, Gallup’s final poll before the election among registered voters had John Kerry leading by 48% to 46%. Among likely voters, defined using Gallup’s “traditional” likely voter model, George Bush was ahead by 49% to 47%, a margin quite close to the final popular vote outcome.The voter turnout pattern in the 2008 presidential election may end up following exactly the same tendencies that have occurred in previous presidential elections. If so, the “traditional” likely voter model will provide the best estimate of the final popular vote.
By many accounts, however, turnout this year has the potential to follow somewhat different patterns. New voter registration is reported to be up significantly in a number of states, and news accounts discuss the evidence that the new registration is disproportionately Democratic. Gallup also has monitored significantly higher enthusiasm about this year’s election among Democrats compared to Republicans. Given that Barack Obama is the first major-party black candidate in U.S. history, it would not be unexpected to see unusually high turnout among black voters, and there continues to be discussion of unusually high registration and turnout among young voters.
These considerations have led Gallup to develop a second likely voter model (”expanded model”) that takes into account current vote intentions but does not incorporate past voting behavior. This model assumes there will be significant numbers of first time or irregular voters in the final electorate pool, and that past voting history is less important as a predictor of voting.
Thus, at this point, Gallup is providing users of our data with several ways of modeling the electorate, taking into account different assumptions about turnout.
More tomorrow…
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
