Sabato’s Crystal Ball: TRACKING THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

07/24/2008

Alan Abramowitz on TRACKING THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:

If you’re a political junkie like me, and if you’re reading this article there’s a pretty good chance you are, then you’re probably addicted to the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls. Where else can you follow the ups and downs of the presidential race every day? I can hardly wait to get my daily fix of Rasmussen every morning and Gallup every afternoon.

[snip]

Lately, though, something’s been bothering me about those tracking polls. I’ve had a nagging suspicion for a while that the results of the tracking polls are out of line with the results of other national polls on the presidential race. Not way out of line, but enough to be noticeable, at least to me. So I decided to check on my suspicion by doing a systematic comparison of the results of the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls with all other national polls that were conducted in May, June, and July. I got the Rasmussen poll results from their website and the Gallup and other poll results from pollingreport.com.

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