Obama pollster: Gallup needs retooling

[BeyondGeography]

Last edited Fri Nov 16, 2012, 09:10 PM - Edit history (1)

President Obama’s lead pollster, Joel Benenson, took issue with the wild variations in the Gallup polling data – and the various public surveys that were widely off the mark – in a post-election interview with POLITICO.

Benenson, whose forecasting model was critical to the campaign, went through the major issues with the public polls that showed wild variations throughout the final weeks of a remarkably stable race.

“I think it’s long overdue for an organization with a name as well-known as Gallup to recognize what the demographics of the American electorate actually are and figure out why their model has continued to skew too old, too white and less likely to be college educated than the nation’s voters,” Benenson said.

Benenson, like others in the Obama campaign high command, said the president won on values and not on demographics, as the Mitt Romney campaign has flagged.

“The American electorate does not bounce around as if it's on a pogo stick,” Benenson said. “If you look at the exit polls, 70 percent of voters had made up their mind before September... Mitt Romney would have had to have a phenomenal two months ... he would have had to won that 30 percent of voters, to make up a five point difference, by 17 points.”

In the Gallup surveys, their weighting for the youngest voters was less than where they were in the 2008 exit data. The same was true for some minority voters...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/11/obama-pollster-gallup-public-polling-needs-a-retooling-149807.html

[aaaaaa5a]

1. Gallup is terrible. Like the GOP, they live in a World based in 1955. One day they will wake up. nt