This morning, USAToday/Gallup is touting their “Swing State Poll” that shows Gingrich and Romney ahead of Obama in key swing states. They find Obama ahead 47-46 over Romney nationwide and Gingrich behind 50-44 which is pretty much in-line with other polls.
However, their current Swing-State-Poll doesn’t pass the smell test at all. What follows is three of their major findings and my evidence to rebut them all with facts from well-known source like uhh, Gallup et al. They report:
“In the swing states, Obama now trails former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among registered voters by 5 points, 43% vs. 48%, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich by 3, 45% vs. 48%.”
They included Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin in their survey.
So I “swung” over to realclearpolitics.com to check out the most recent state-by-state polls and no other pollster is confirming these strange numbers from Gallup. Let’s just name a few:
1. Florida: Obama beating Romney by 7 and Gingrich by 12: NBC/Marrist
2. Pennsylvania: Obama beating Romney by 4 and Gingrich by 17: Morningcall
3. Ohio: Quinnipiac shows Gingrich and Romney up on Obama by 1 but PPP shows
Obama up on them by 9.
4. Colorado: Obama beating Romney by 2 and Gingrich by 8: PPP
5. Iowa: Obama beating Romney by 7 and Gingrich by 10: NBC/Marist
So on and on it goes with literally no pollster suggesting Romney and Gingrich are leading ALL of the swing-states. If you look more closely, you can guess at why their polls have become so strange:
“Since the heady days of 2008, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States Poll finds the number of voters who identify themselves as Democratic or Democratic-leaning in these key states has eroded, down by 4 percentage points, while the ranks of Republicans have climbed by 5 points.”
Oh okay, according to Gallup, there's been a swing of 9 points in party identification from Dem to the GOP. However, another Gallup findings shows their party identification swings "WILDLY" every month. Check this from um, Gallup:
Uhh, oh my goodness according to Gallup, 50% of Americans identified as democrats, up from the 43% who claimed they were members of the sane party in November?
Wow!!!!
But back in "certain" weeks of September, and August there were lots of Democrats but they turned into republicans before month’s end?
So it’s obvious they can’t shoot straight on how many republicans vs. democrats are truly in this country. And, they deceived their audience with the first line about: “Since the heady days of 2008…” when they claim there were so many more democrats. I guess they didn’t want to show it was actually since last month, that there were so many more democrats.
Then they made matters worse with this on yesterday:
“And the "enthusiasm gap" that helped fuel a Democratic victory last time has turned into a Republican asset. Sixty-one percent of Republicans say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president next year, compared with 47% of Democrats.”
But they said this just four days ago:
December 8, 2011
Republicans Less Enthusiastic About Voting in 2012
Republicans' enthusiasm gap over Democrats narrows
"Republicans' enthusiasm about voting in the election for president next year has decreased, with 49% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican now saying they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, down from 58% in September. This narrows the gap between them and Democrats, 44% of whom are more enthusiastic than usual, essentially the same as in September."
Um, Gallup guys, come on. You are all over the place with many of your polls and are becoming a perpetual outlier in my opinion. You can’t just pretend there are 10-point swings in party identification from month-to-month to justify your outlier findings. You can’t say that the enthusiasm gap for republicans have waned tremendously on 12/8/2011 and have grown 20 points on 12/12/2011.
Something smells rotten with a lot of these recent Gallup polls and I have officially lost all faith in them.
Gallup…what’s going on over there?