Salon.com > Gallup poll

Where our tax dollars should go

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:21:00 +0000

After heroic feats of arithmetic and a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine interpretation of opaque rules and guidelines, millions of Americans will file their taxes by this Monday, April 15th.

Then there’s the bad news.

For anyone who takes a peek at where his or her income tax dollars are going, Tax Day can be maddening. Outsized chunks of our taxes fund the military, rising healthcare costs, and interest on the federal debt. Comparatively tiny amounts go to education, science, alternative energy, and the environment.

Category by category, this is contrary to what Americans want -- and what we the people want is pretty clear. Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus -- the kicker -- Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?

Gallup is very upset at Nate Silver

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Did Gallup just blame Nate Silver for ruining the art and science of polling?

You don't have to read too far between the lines of a statement from Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport, published on Friday, to get that impression.

Newport first attempts the formidable task of defending Gallup's polling accuracy during the 2012 campaign. Perhaps he was anticipating Silver's Saturday column, which labeled Gallup the most inaccurate pollster of all the firms that measured voter sentiment this year. But Silver was hardly alone in wondering why Gallup regularly reported numbers much more favorable to Romney than anyone else in 2012. We deserve an explanation a little less lame than Newport's: what's the big fuss? Gallup wasn't really off by that much.

But then it gets interesting:

Clinging to a lead

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:31:00 +0000

“Bafflement” might be a good way of describing the collective reaction of Democrats at 1 p.m. yesterday, when Gallup unveiled fresh daily tracking poll numbers that put Mitt Romney 7 points ahead of President Obama. But “panic” might have been applicable in some quarters too.

A day earlier, Gallup had shown the GOP nominee’s edge jumping to 6 points, which had been scary enough, but Democrats had been able to tell themselves it was a fluke – statistical noise that would quickly be corrected. But now his lead was expanding further. And this wasn’t some easy-to-dismiss Rasmussen poll either; it was Gallup, the gold standard name in political polling. No other survey was showing anything near a 7-point national lead for Romney, but it seemed to raise the possibility that something bad for Obama was stirring in the electorate.

Then came the reassurance.