Sunday, October 21, 2012

Can IBD and Gallup Both Be Right?

Today's polls brings more confusion than ever, because they now show the widest range between any two polls, and show the race moving in opposite directions.

Investor's Business Daily has a tracking poll Sunday in which Obama took a 5.7% point lead, up 4 points from Saturday.  Now this is a tracking poll over 6 days and has 913 people in it's sample.   One week ago, Obama had a 0.7% lead in the poll.

Meanwhile Gallup Tracking has moved Romney back to a 7% lead after slipping a point on Saturday.  Gallup uses a 7 day tracking model and has a sample of 2700 people.

So who is closer to the truth?  We really won't know until hte election, but it does show the volatility of some o fhte pools.

Meanwhile NBC/Wall Street Journal today released a poll showing the race tied.   This sampling was entirely after the 2nd debate and shows movement of 3 points towards Romney from the end of September. Unfortunately they did not release a poll after the first debate, so we have no idea of whether there was any movement after hte first debate.  We only know the net movement.

If you are a partisan, you have a poll to quote today and declare the race over.  However in the end, both polls cannot be right.  But which one IS right?

No comments:

Post a Comment