Another Useless Gallup Poll
It includes the top four + Newt Gingrich, and literally nobody else.
Why?
Posted by Brad @ 8:48 am on June 18th 2007
7 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Remember, this is often the poll that determines debate inclusion.
“Sorry guys. You’ve had until mid-June to make your case. If you’re not in the top tier by then, what good are you?”
Comment by Brad — 6/18/2007 @ 8:56 am
It should at least be explained what they’re doing. If you believe that candidates A, B, C and D are going to be the only ones in the running and that supporters of candidates E-Z are going to turn to one from A-D, then say so.
I wrote about punditry based on polling the other day, saying that pundits should explain their model. Clearly, it’s even more important for pollsters to explain their model, particularly if they are doing something other than the obvious, the obvious being “provide a list including all the declared and likely candidates”, for example.
Comment by Adam — 6/18/2007 @ 9:04 am
The really sad thing about this is that you can’t find out what happened to the other 20% of the Republican vote that isn’t accounted for–undoubtedly it is split between the second tier guys, but in theory you could have several of them sitting at 4 or 5%–a move UP for any or all of them from the previous results (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-04-poll-results_N.htm)
Comment by Laura — 6/18/2007 @ 9:07 am
I just don’t get it. I think it’s the Gingrich inclusion tht bugs me. I’d almost understand if they were just interested in polling the four top guys. But they’re also including a guy who isn’t a candidate, very well might not be, and who, even in the hypothetical realm, isn’t making much of a dent anyway (as Laura points out, the missing % is almost triple what Gingrich is getting).
Really, it’s not like a debate. It doesn’t HURT them to include all the actual candidates. After all, the BALLOTS will include them (save the ones that drop out between now and then). If you’re going for the kind of model that Adam describes, you add another question, one with all the candidates, then a followup where you parse it down to just the top ones (giving you the dual benefit of seeing how people would vote given ALL The candidates, AND where those votes would go if the list got shaved down).
Comment by Brad — 6/18/2007 @ 9:11 am
Have either Thompson or Gingrich(heh) even entered the race? Did I miss something? If not, why isn’t Paris Hilton included in the poll?
Comment by Yank Crank — 6/18/2007 @ 10:00 am
Including Gingrich but not all of the second tier guys bothers me, as well. I can see including Thompson at this point, since he’s formed an exploratory committee, at least. But Gingrich is just playing games. We’ve obviously moved past the “pre-race” stage where pollsters just throw every name that has ever been mentioned as a possibility out, but it seems to me that with campaigning actively going on, and 10 guys involved in each of the 3 debates (where the Republicans are concerned), that including someone who hasn’t even formed an exploratory committee, but excluding those who have announced and are competing is pretty shoddy work–sort of an attempt to determine the race through opinion polling.
It may be, I suppose, that they polled on the second tier, and just chose not to report. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but they ought to at least have a link to the actual questions asked and the complete results–if for no other reason that not to be accused of trying to manipulate the race.
Comment by Laura — 6/18/2007 @ 10:34 am
I’ve not been a big fan of Gallup in the last decade or so; in my opinion they do fairly shoddy work and trade mostly on their name’s history. But, like anything else, when there’s an entrenched (especially historic) interest involved, you can rest assured that somebody is going to feel the need to start playing gate-keeper, which seems to me to be what Gallup has been doing.
Keep in mind also that Gallup, because of that name, is a tool that a lot of people rely on for everything from media to debate inclusion to fundraising, etc. By disincluding the second tier, they enable others to start arbitrarily dicing up the race as they see fit (debate programmers, for instance, who can say “whelp, they ain’t even polling, why should we invite them?”) Instead of being an objective measure, they’re basically rendering themselves as a subjective excuse. Gate-keepers.
Comment by Brad — 6/18/2007 @ 11:56 am