The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The first thing,let's kill all the pollsters

    By Flavius on Sun, 10/28/2012 - 12:46am |

    The Gallup tracking polls on which I've been wasting good space here aren't worth the effort. IMHO successive reports appear to show important changes which are purely the result of Gallup's methodology

    Consider Obama's rating in  the  polls issued on               

                 10/21                                 10/23                 and       10/26

                   45                                           47                                           46

    How could  Obama’s ratings change  like this? It’s in the roundings. IMHO  if Gallup published this info carried out to the first decimal point these variations would be seen to be trivial .Consider the following illustration in which I have created  some imaginary daily data which calculates to the totals Gallup published.

                    Oct 21                                 Oct 23                  and            Oct 26th.   

     

    October 14th        45.0 %                   16           45.0 %                      19         45.5               

                      15           45.0                       17           45.0                        20           46.0

                      16           45.0                       18           45.5                        21           50.0

                      17           45.0                        19           45.5                        22          49.2

                      18           45.5                        20           46.0                        23           45.0

                      19           45.5                        21           50.0                        24           44.0

                      20           46.0                        22           49.2                       25           44.0

    Average                  45.3                                        46.6                                        46.2

    Gallup would use     45                                           47                                           46   

    Sorry to have used a sledge hammer to crack a nut but I've been unable to follow the wise advice of  Articleman and just ignore Gallup.Now I will. You should too. Altho you probably have sensibly made that decision already.              

     

    Comments

    Nate Silver appeared on "Real Time" on Friday. He viewed Gallup using the analogy of 4 out of 5 doctors suggest that lowering cholesterol is important in preventing heart disease. Gallup is the fifth doctor. I think Gallup is suffering from sampling error.


    by AnonymousRm (not verified) on Sun, 10/28/2012 - 9:45am

    I agree .But separate from that by rounding they exaggerate the apparent trends with its sample.


    by Flavius on Sun, 10/28/2012 - 10:14am