Why Gallup Is Wrong

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster gives a cogent reason why the latest Gallup poll numbers are way off, which show Bush-Kerry at 55%-42%. Apparently Gallup asked likely voters in the following breakdown:
GOP 45% of sample
Dem 33% of sample
Independent 28% of sample

Interesting that in the 2000 election, the breakdown of actual voters was:
GOP 35% of electorate
Dem 39% of electorate
Independent 26% of electorate

If anything, Gallup should be oversampling Democrats! Sheesh. If I were conspiracy-minded, I might think Gallup is trying to stack the deck. Soto suggests that it's not that off base:


The real problem here is that 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.


Read the details.