In the wake of a Gallup tracking poll showing Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney ahead by seven points in the national polls, statistics wonks and political pundits are criticizing the organization's methodology and findings.
Washington Post political reporter and author of "WonkBlog" Ezra Klein is one of the most recent to criticize the emphasis placed on Wednesday's Gallup tracking poll, characterizing the massive shift toward Romney as "weirder."
Specifically, he points out how the Gallup tracking poll showed President Barack Obama winning in the East, West and Midwest and only losing the South - but by 22 points. This would hurt Obama in the national vote, but not electorally, Klein highlights.
"If Gallup is right, then that looks to me like we're headed for an electoral college/popular vote split," Klein wrote this morning, adding Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport agreed with that assessment.
However, both men acknowledged a closer look at the tracking poll showed Obama and Romney in a near dead heat among registered voters.
The seven point lead among likely voters might be solely due to Gallup's "likely voter" model, which not only takes into account voter preference, but also voter enthusiasm.
"That sounds...like a model that would tend to overstate the effects of major events that favored one candidate or the other," Klein said, emphasizing the poll could still reflect a bump for Romney after his performance in the Denver debate.
Other polls from NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist, Real Clear Politics and the Huffington Post disagree with the Gallup tracking poll. They all show the race in a dead heat or with Obama winning electorally.
The best breakdown of importance of this week's Gallup poll was provided by statistician Nate Silver, author of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight.
In his pre-NYT days, Silver made a name for himself in the 2008 election when he correctly predicted the electoral college winner of 49 out of 50 of the states.
In a lengthy piece Thursday, Silver picked apart what he has deemed the "Gallup versus the World" phenomenon, calling their Wednesday tracking poll "deeply inconsistent."
Silver points out that national tracking polls, of which there are seven currently published daily, are "a mediocre group on the whole" with Gallup's past accuracy "middling" in that group.
For example, in in 2000, Gallup put George W. Bush 10 points ahead of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry - a race that ended in a dead heat with Bush winning the electoral vote but not the popular.
Likewise, in 2008, Gallup predicted Obama would beat Arizona Senator John McCain in the race for the White House by a whopping 11 percent - his actual win turned out to be seven points ahead. In 2012, Gallup saw Republicans winning Congress by 15 points, again which they only won by seven.
Like Klein, Silver chalked this Gallup discrepancy up to the organization's "likely voter" model, which inappropriately weighs for shifts in voter enthusiasm.
The average American may be putting too much weight on the Gallup polls, mostly due to familiarity with the organization's name.
"The Gallup poll's influence on the subjective perception about where the presidential race stands seems to be proportionately much greater [than need be]," Silver said, adding, "This simply isn't rational, in my view."
"To be clear, I would not recommend that you literally just disregard the Gallup poll. You should consider it — but consider it in context," Silver said Thursday.
But, he added, regardless of the importance people put on the Gallup tracking polls, "it's much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around."
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