*** Gallup, Gallup, Gallup: As many readers know, we're not fans of the Gallup tracking poll and yesterday was more proof why. Gallup has two samples out -- one (the daily tracking) with Obama up eight points and another (conducted for USA Today) with McCain up four points among likely voters and with Obama up three among registered voters. Somehow, technically, one can claim this all falls inside the various margins of error. But it's results like these that should remind us that even good pollsters are struggling to poll this year. This isn't an easy time for a pollster. The Gallup folks are in the charge of the best brand there is in public opinion research. So if they are getting screwy results, that should make you suspect of a lot of results you see, particularly on the state level by folks who claim to be pollsters but haven't been doing this for very long. We continue to recommend to folks that they do their best to get their hands on polling conducted by the campaign pollsters. These are folks who are in the field every day and get paid to get it right, not to get a story.
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