Did Gallup mislead readers on its last generic Congressional ballot chart?
Many of us have puzzled over the latest results from Gallup’s regular look at the generic Congressional ballot from its surveys. Most pollsters — including Gallup — have had the race a tie or Republicans in the lead most of 2010. Suddenly this week, Gallup showed a big gain for Democrats in the gap between the two parties, even though it also showed Republican enthusiasm peaking. How did this happen? It turns out that Gallup may have mixed their sampling types without acknowledging the difference. Red State calls this a lie: The Republicans lead with a sample of Registered Voters, but the Democrats lead with a sample of Adults. Someone who trusted Gallup’s pretty, but lying, picture would never have noticed. Real Clear Politics noticed, and actually recorded the polls differently. Friends noticed this and alerted me. It is terribly dishonest for Gallup to string together two different polls as one series, as Gallup does not only in their graphs, but in their write-ups as well. Here’s a
