Beware of General Election Polling Results

[berni_mccoy]

Gallups daily tracking poll uses the following methodology:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105664/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Clinton-Remain-Nearly-Tied.aspx

Data collected between Mar 21-24 sampled 1280 Democratic/Democratic leaning voters for the head-to-head matchup of Obama vs. Clinton.

However, for the General Election matchups, they sampled 4399 National Registered Voters. If they used the same dataset, then this implies they are sampling non-Democrats to Democrats at a nearly 3-to-1 ratio (3119 non-dem registered voters to 1280 dem registered voters). Given the primary turnouts, it should be 2-to-1 favoring Dems.

If either Obama or Clinton supporters defect to McCain at the current rates, McCain would still lose by a significant margin against either Clinton or Obama.

Once again, it appears Gallup is oversampling Republicans to show a better result for the GOP.

[annabanana]

1. They want to make it "close enough" to steal. Again.

If enough people are convinced we have "a real horserace going on here" they will accept a result that OUGHT to be clearly impossible.

[berni_mccoy]

2. Agreed. It has me worried a bit about the GE.

[Mnemosyne]

3. KnR n/t

[berni_mccoy]

4. Kicking for the Dinner crowd.