Don't listen to ANYTHING from Gallup until late Oct.

[ButterflyBlood]

I've been told this by a non-partisan polling expert, and past performance seems to prove it, Gallup's methodology, while good, is designed to work right before the election, and does NOT work so well so far in advance. therefore, many fluky results can happen, there can be huge gaps in results between LVs and RVs, and we can see crap like how in 2000 a few Gallup polls showed California a dead heat.

until the second half of Oct., take anything from Gallup with a grain of salt.

[tritsofme]

1. This is what Gallup says about their own Likely Voter model

Apart from cost, some pollsters (and presumably those whom Cook referred to) object to using an LV model early on in the campaign because they think the more stringent subset of respondents may not include all voters. One measure that many polling organizations use to identify likely voters is a respondent's level of interest in the election. The problem is that for many people, interest may not be stimulated until late in the campaign, and in the meantime, their low interest could cause them to be classified as non-voters. Some observers argue that excluding large numbers of people early in the year because of lack of interest may give a false reading of voter preferences.

Gallup tries to avoid the lack-of-interest problem by specifying that 55% of its sample (which corresponds with a 55% projected turnout in the election) will be considered likely voters. Gallup asks each respondent seven LV screening questions, and gives each person an LV score of 0 to 7. The top 55% are classified as likely voters. This classification works even if interest is low early in the year, because low-interest respondents are considered likely voters as long as they are in the top 55% of the sample on the overall LV scale.

[WMliberal]

2. i won't listen to gallup THEN

or ever. i'll listen to the exit polls.