I was often very critical of Gallup polling during the run-up to the election. Their polls appeared to be major outliers and while many in conservative circles loves the numbers, it seemed highly unlikely that Gallup was right and everyone else was wrong. With their drastically different numbers, Gallup was either going to be the genius of pollsters, with all others falling short of their accuracy, or the biggest joke in the polling community. Upon seeing the actual election numbers, it became quite obvious that Gallup was the latter. Just how awful was Gallup? Let me provide a few numbers.
Most of the pollsters were conservatively biased to some extent this election cycle. Out of 23 pollsters that provided at least one likely-voter poll in the final three weeks of the campaigns, only 4 were biased in favor of Obama - 19 out of 23 were biased in favor of Romney.
Rasmussen Reports is notorious for their conservative-bias in their polls. The same was true throughout this election season, as on average, Rasmussen provided a 3.7 point Republican bias on average in their polls. It was even worse for the American Research Group - another group that is rather notorious for their conservative bias. ARG, on average, had a 4.5 point bias for Romney. These numbers pale in comparison to Gallup. Gallup, on average, had a conservative-bias of 7.2 points - almost seven and a half points! That's absurd! From this point forward, whenever Gallup says their margin of error is +/-4.5, I'll know that to mean +/-12. It's official - Gallup has become a bigger joke than Rush Limbaugh's love life.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/#more-37396
Most of the pollsters were conservatively biased to some extent this election cycle. Out of 23 pollsters that provided at least one likely-voter poll in the final three weeks of the campaigns, only 4 were biased in favor of Obama - 19 out of 23 were biased in favor of Romney.
Rasmussen Reports is notorious for their conservative-bias in their polls. The same was true throughout this election season, as on average, Rasmussen provided a 3.7 point Republican bias on average in their polls. It was even worse for the American Research Group - another group that is rather notorious for their conservative bias. ARG, on average, had a 4.5 point bias for Romney. These numbers pale in comparison to Gallup. Gallup, on average, had a conservative-bias of 7.2 points - almost seven and a half points! That's absurd! From this point forward, whenever Gallup says their margin of error is +/-4.5, I'll know that to mean +/-12. It's official - Gallup has become a bigger joke than Rush Limbaugh's love life.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/#more-37396
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