Gallup seeks fixes after 2012 miss

Politico reports:

Eighteen months after the Gallup Organization incorrectly showed Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, the legendary but embattled polling firm unveiled additional research aimed at fine-tuning their methodology before the 2016 campaign.

Gallup conducted polls last year in New Jersey and Virginia in the run-up to gubernatorial elections in those states, testing different modes of surveying voters and alternative methods for accurately predicting which voters would actually cast ballots.

Overall, the research showed telephone polling was more accurate than Internet surveys the firm commissioned – suggesting that any switch towards the web, as some news organizations have done, was premature for their purposes.

“We simply haven’t found another way to estimate the national electorate,” said Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport in an interview after the research was presented.

Something to think about.