Here are the latest results from the Gallup National Polls poll by Gallup Poll published on USAElectionPolls.com:
There were 903 voters polled on 8/7-10.
| Gallup Poll Date: 8/7-10 Added: 8/13/08 |
|
| Barack Obama | 45% |
| John McCain | 38% |
| Bob Barr | 1% |
| Ralph Nader | 1% |
| Unsure | 6% |
| Other | 2% |
| Wouldn't Vote | 2% |
| None of these | 5% |
Quote:
With the unaided question used in the new poll, 83% of registered voters named either Obama (45%) or McCain (38%) as their preferred candidate. Obama's 7-point advantage over McCain on the open-ended ballot is similar to the 5-point lead he currently holds in Gallup's Daily tracking poll.There are certainly trade-offs in trying to get an accurate read on third-party candidate support. Each election year, Gallup uses a variety of approaches, including third-party candidate name identification, the open-ended question reported here, and prompted ballots, in which the names of all candidates who will appear on the ballot in most states are read, to try to assess the level of third-party voting. These questions help inform Gallup about the level of third-party voting but they also inform Gallup about whether a third-party candidate merits inclusion in its standard presidential trial-heat question.
The standard closed-ended Gallup trial-heat question used in Gallup Poll Daily tracking and USA Today/Gallup polling has thus far in 2008 not included the names of minor-party candidates. Doing so runs the risk of overestimating their actual support and affecting poll accuracy, based on a comparison of final pre-election poll estimates to the actual vote on Election Day. Typically, unless there has been a well-known and well-funded third-party candidate running (like Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996), minor-party candidates have accounted for about 1% to 2% of the actual vote on Election Day. Recent polls by other firms that have included the names of minor-party candidates in their presidential trial heats find total third-party support ranging from 5% to 10% among registered voters.
Even though Gallup does not read the names of minor-party candidates in its standard question, it does accept volunteered responses of minor-party candidates in its closed-ended questions (about 1% in tracking so far this year).
