Gallup-Rasmussen Poll Average: August 22, 2012

18

The Rasmussen Tracking poll today shows Mitt Romney with a 46% – 44% lead over President Obama while Gallup’s Tracking poll shows Romney maintaining a lead of 47% – 45%.

The average of these two polls is now showing the Romney/Ryan campaign with 46.5% and the Obama/Biden at 44.5%.

The average approval rate for President Obama is now at negative 3% meaning that 3% more of those polled disapprove than approve of the Presidents job performance. The average approval rating for the President was 47.0% and the average disapproval was 50%.

In an examination of all polls published after August 13th and applying them to the elector count, if the election were held today and the most recent polls are accurate Romney would win the presidency over Obama by an electoral vote of 282 – 256

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

18 COMMENTS

  1. As stated on an earlier article, I think the numbers presented should be on this article as well.

    I think it would be a true service and mark of being impartial if you simply pointed people to the website http://www.realclearpolitics.com and let people see that a large majority of polling data is in favor of President Obama, not Romney as indicated by Rasmussen, a notoriously partisan right-wing pollster.

    As indicated on a previous article, I strongly feel that you are cherry-picking which polls you are citing. The front page of the above mentioned website has Obama leading Romney by an average of 1.5, and that the electoral college is still leaning to President Obama, who has 221 electoral votes in comparison to Romney’s 191. It takes 270 electoral votes to win, so the race is still up in the air, but Obama clearly has more electoral votes in most polls (I have seen recent polls with Obama as high as 267 electoral votes). The same website listed above has Intrade Political ‘Securities’ showing Barack Obama to be re-elected President in 2012 at 57.6%, while it shows Mitt Romney to be elected President in 2012 at only 41.5%.

    Furthermore, this website has a compilation of polls. If you pick the time period of 05/01/2012 to 08/20/2012, the poll “favor” factor has Obama leading in 36 out of 52 polls, with three polls listed as a “tie”. So if you remove the “tie” votes that gives a margin of 73.4% in favor of Obama and only 26.6% in favor of Romney. Furthermore, Obama leads by as much as 13 points in one poll, while Romney only has a maximum lead of 4 points in any of the 52 polls.

    Please do readers a favor and show all the polling data and facts, not just the ones that favor a certain political slant.

    • I agree truthsquad. The only thing I see going on by posting this poll everyday is, the CCO is being partial to one person. Start telling all the facts, not just the one’s helping your person.

      • Polls by their very definition are not facts. They are the projections of the pollster based on the response of a large sample of respondents and the specific sampling algorithm chosen. Just the distinction between sampling registered voters vs. likely voters can change the outcomes by up to 10%. There are no facts when it comes to polls period until after the election has been held. Here are some facts:

        During Election 2008, Rasmussen Reports projected that Barack Obama would defeat John McCain by a 52% to 46% margin. When the votes were counted Obama was 53% to 46%. In 2004, Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project the vote totals for both candidates within half a percentage point. Gallup had similar factual performance.

  2. Realclearpolitics is a compilation of polls of varying methodology and quality. No additional weight is put on better polls. While it’s a useful poll trending tool, it’s a worthless poll itself.

    Gallup and Rasmussen pride themselves on predicting outcomes with Rasmussen having a good track record. They are better than most in the game and simply must be given more weight.

    • Pretty sure I disagree with you on Rasmussen being given “more weight”.

      How about this website:

      electoral-vote.com

      It has a lot of good data, but still leans toward Obama being the victor come November.

      • We do reference that one too. Today it shows 297 – 241 in Obama’s favor with 8 states in the “barely” category. That is certainly a possible outcome. The problem we have with that as opposed to averaging Rasmussen and Gallup is that the polls used seem to be all over the map which means the polling criteria is all over the map. Last month that poll had Romney with over 300 electors for a couple of days because of a couple of rogue polls in Michigan and Virginia. It does not have the history of correct predictions to compete with either Rasmussen or Gallup though.

        We give equal weight to Rasmussen and Gallup.

        By the way that poll is using PPP in Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin. PPP is a democrat commissioned poll that oversamples democrats as part of their algorithm. Yesterday’s poll for Michigan showing Romney ahead is not being used. If PPP were tossed for partisan influence and the new Michigan poll were used the electoral numbers would favor Romney by 298 – 240. That should serve to emphasize just how close this election is at this point. Both campaigns have plenty of opportunities to blow it in the next 10 weeks.

  3. From http://www.electoral-vote.com

    For each state, the current best estimate of the presidential race is given below, with all the polls for the most recent week of polling averaged together. (Note: the most recent week of polling for a given state may not be this week.) The states are listed from most Democratic to most Republican. The fourth column gives the candidate’s current lead in that state.

    If you compare our scores to that of other media sources, you will no doubt find differences. Part of this is that we do count robopollsters (e.g., PPP, Rasmussen, and SurveyUSA) but do not count partisan pollsters, who work to elect Democrats or Republicans. Also, every source has its own algorithm for combining recent polls.

    Here is our algorithm for combining polls to make the map.

    1. The most recent poll in every state is always used.
    2. If no other polls were taken within a week of the most recent one, only the most recent poll counts.
    3. If one or more other polls were taken within a week of the most recent, all of them are averaged, weighted equally.

    This algorithm smoothes out fluctations better and produces fewer wild swings and gives a better overall result. You can see which polls were used by putting the mouse on a state. The Source field tells which polls are used and gives the final date of the final poll used. If multiple polls were used, the first nine characters of each pollster are listed and the pollsters are separated by a “+” sign.

    The EVP average page (http://bit.ly/NliAdd) uses these scores.

    A consequence of this algorithm is that in the “News from the Votemaster” section, a new poll may be reported but the map gives a different result. This effect is always due to multiple recent polls being averaged. You will see that this is the case by looking for the “+” sign used to separate multiple pollsters in the Source field of the pop-up box. Another consequence of this algorithm, is that this site may give slightly different results from other polling sites, each of which uses its own algorithm, sometimes a far more complex one.

    Why a look-back window of 1 week? It is admittedly arbitrary. If the window is too short, the results gyrate wildly as different polls use different methodologies (http://bit.ly/NliFh0). If the window is too long, genuine shifts in public opinion take too long to show up. The choice of 1 week is based on my now-extensive experience with examining polling data. Public reaction to news events often takes several days to take effect as people often change their opinions after talking to friends, coworkers, and relatives.

    It is worth emphasizing that the margin of error in most state polls is at least 3% for each candidate. Thus if a poll says Smith is beating Jones 52% to 48%, Smith might be as low as 49% and Jones might be as high as 51%. When the difference between two candidates is less than 2x the margin of error, the race is a statistical tie. On the map, the states with a white center are those where the candidates differ by less than 5% and are certainly statistical ties. Even some of the ones in the solid light color may technically be statistical ties, but a lead of 5% or more most likely means the candidate is actually ahead.

  4. Even the heavily biased Fox News knows Romney is behind at this point.

    Repeatedly cherry picking and reporting on polls that favor your preferred candidate is clearly biased. 4 pro-Romney polls, and 1 anti-Obama article were posted in the past *3 DAYS*.

    The CCO has always leaned slightly to the right, but this presidential election seems to have polarized this local publication into a full blown right-wing propaganda machine.

    • The poll about the found Picasso has been up for nearly a full week.

      We agree with you that the Fox poll’s sampling algorithm is inaccurate so we don’t use it.

      We stand by the fact that only two polls, specifically Rasmussen and Gallup have a history of calling presidential races to within 1%. If these polls ever validate the others with terrible historical accuracy we shall report it.

      • I again just want to comment that Rasmussen was only created as a “polling” firm in 2003. Therefore, they have only predicted the results of two presidential records. I will concede that Gallup has been around for a lot longer, and they do have a history of being fairly accurate. But that still does not explain how out of 20 or more polling firms that they are the only two making this type of prediction. As I indicated yesterday, if you pick the time period of 05/01/2012 to 08/20/2012, the poll “favor” factor has Obama leading in 36 out of 52 polls, with three polls listed as a “tie”. So if you remove the “tie” votes that gives a margin of 73.4% in favor of Obama and only 26.6% in favor of Romney. Therefore, statistically speaking Rasmussen and Gallup are in a clear minority. We will all find out on November 8 if their track record will stand.

      • I again just want to comment that Rasmussen was only created as a “polling” firm in 2003. Therefore, they have only predicted the results of two presidential records. I will concede that Gallup has been around for a lot longer, and they do have a history of being fairly accurate. But that still does not explain how out of 20 or more polling firms that they are the only two making this type of prediction. As I indicated yesterday, if you pick the time period of 05/01/2012 to 08/20/2012, the prediction factor has Obama leading in 36 out of 52 polls with a margin of 73.4% to 26.6%. Therefore, statistically speaking Rasmussen and Gallup are in a clear minority. We will all find out on November 8 if their track record will stand.

        • Better to be in the accurate minority than the incorrect majority. By the way if you write a letter to the editor with your name we will publish your views.

  5. All of the polls taken in this week and in this month are worthless because the only poll that counts is in November.

    Quit the whining and ignore all of this BS until election day.

Comments are closed.