Gallup thinks America is Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster valiantly continues to flay the methodology of "the Pioneering Pollster":

...Gallup and other pollsters who refuse to weight their samples for party identification say that weighting samples to reflect demographic and census data is more reliable that using party ID as a factor. Yet after looking closely at the demographic breakdown of the sample that Gallup used to reach their conclusions, it becomes clear that Gallup has become the in-house pollster for Karl Rove and the GOP's view of how the American voting populace should look. Why?

Because according to Gallup's poll [internals] this week, they expect the electorate to be 85% white, 41% conservative while only 19% liberal, and a third to make over $75,000 per year....

Total Weighted Sample: 557 Likely Voters
(2000 exit poll actual results in parentheses)

By Political Ideology:
Conservative: 41% (29%)
Moderate: 41% (50%)
Liberal: 18% (20%)

Party ID:
GOP: 39% (35%)
Dem: 35% (39%)
Ind: 25% (27%)

Income:
Over $75,000: 32% (28%)
$50-75,000: 16% (25%)
$30-50,000: 26% (24%)
$20-30,000: 11%
Under $20K: 9%

And if this wasn’t bad enough,

Race:
White: 85% (81%)
NonWhite: 15% (19%)
Black: (a subset of NonWhite) 8% (10%)

I think those numbers speak for themselves. Gallup is using a sample that assumes 1) depressed minority participation this year from 2000, 2) assumes a drastically higher participation of conservatives as compared to 2000, and 3) predicts that Bush would win by 8% with that electorate. It should also be noted that Gallup's LV sample contains only 11% in the 18-29 year old age grouping, compared to 17% in the 2000 exit polls. Recent polls show that Kerry/Edwards is doing well with younger voters.

He points out that with these consistently hinky polls, the inevitable "oh yeah, we missed that" corrections and adjustments don't mean much post hoc, since the horse has already left the barn--co-sponsors, CNN and USAToday trumpet them far and wide. But I doubt it matters. Odds are great this will be known as the "first-time" or stealth voter election or some such goofy appelation. These numbers suppress turnout urges for disgusted but reluctant Bush voters, and, for many pro-Kerry or even just anybody-but-Bush types, they only feed the frenzy of donations and volunteers to Get Out The Vote efforts in battlegrounds... I'd love to have a piece of the 11-passenger van rental action in OH, WI, FL, MN and a few others.