Gallup blew the 2012 election. Can the polling firm bounce back?

If Nate Silver was the winner of last year’s presidential election, then Gallup was the loser. The long-time leader in polling consistently showed Mitt Romney ahead, sometimes by a decisive margin. And then President Barack Obama won by 3.9 points—5 points off of Gallup’s final margin. In response, Gallup launched an investigation headed by the University of Michigan’s Michael Traugott, a highly regarded survey methodologist who investigated polling errors in the 2008 Democratic primaries. The initial report, released yesterday, shows Gallup is on the right track to correcting the problems that bedeviled it in 2012. [cont.]

Nate Cohn, New Republic

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