Public Opinion Watch

An interesting article by Ruy Teixeira on Bush's decline in support among Republicans as well as others leading to his sub-40 approval, the rising not lowering self-identification of Latinos with the Democratic Party, and how Gallup screws up its polls by not weighing by party ID.

"Between February 4-6 and February 7-10, an 11 point Republican advantage became a 6 point Democratic advantage. Similarly, between March 18-20 and March 21-23, a 5 point Republican advantage became an 8 point Democratic advantage."

So in a couple of days over 10% of the people have switched parties? No one except Gallup believes this and they have doubts. Article in PDF form. The article also points out the growing concensus on how to fix this party ID problem and get more accurate polls.

Not every polling organization is interested in this. There is a big advantage to polls which have big swings in opinions, they get more publicity because they make news. It seems clear that Gallup likes to be quoted and be talked about more than they like to be correct. I have the impression they also seem to take special care on their last poll before an election which is what people use to check accuracy.