It’s also important to know who was polled. When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate, George W. Bush’s lead over him dropped from 17 points to 2 points in one day. But the shift was illusory. Gallup had switched from questioning only “likely voters” in the 17-point poll to questioning “registered voters.” Among registered voters, Republicans are more likely to vote than Democrats; hence the discrepancy. Within a week, a Gallup poll confirmed that even post-Lieberman, Bush had a 16-point lead among likely voters.
As Robinson writes, lazy reporting on Gallup polls produced a similar effect in 1992. There are still Republicans who insist that the first President Bush was surging toward the end of that year’s campaign, and lost momentum only when Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh decided to indict a prominent Republican the weekend before the election. But Robinson shows that the apparent surge-and-collapse of Bush’s numbers was an artifact of changes in poll methods.
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