Poll Watch: Gallup Ends ‘Horse Race’ Polling of 2016 Presidential Race to Focus on Issues

It is hard to escape horse race polling and predictions as pollsters of all stripes have been asking voters for months (and in some cases years) whom they will support in next year’s presidential race. But Politico reported on Wednesday that one of the biggest names in polling, Gallup, has decided to take a step back from the frenzied who’s-in-first coverage and focus solely – for now, at least – on what the American public thinks about issues.

Gallup was widely criticized in 2012 after its pre-election polls were found to have overestimated Mitt Romney’s share of the vote. The organization conducted an in-depth review of its pre-election polling, which uncovered a series of methodological problems that appeared to lead to faulty results and an inaccurate picture of the electorate.

The polling industry is facing severe challenges as it becomes harder to reach and engage Americans in sometimes lengthy interviews about their views. Many polling firms, including Gallup, are experimenting with surveys conducted over the Internet or even on smartphones, but there is no consensus yet on whether polls conducted by such methods are as reliable as traditional telephone-based surveys.

At a meeting of journalists and pollsters in June 2013 in which he detailed the findings of the internal review, Frank Newport, the editor in chief of Gallup, conceded that “there is something going on in the industry, and Gallup was at the bottom of that” in the 2012 election. He expressed his hope at the time that Gallup would “be at the accurate end of the spectrum in the future.”

Yet, Mr. Newport explained Wednesday, while Gallup has “no doubts that polling, including our own, can be accurate in 2016,” rather than entering the fray this cycle, the organization has decided to reallocate its resources away from the horse race polling to focus more on what is on voters’ minds. The goal, he said, is “understanding where the public stands on the issues of the day, how they are reacting to the proposals put forth by the candidates, what it is they want the candidates to do, and what messages or images of the candidates are seeping into the public’s consciousness.”

The New York Times/CBS News poll will ask voters periodically which candidate they would like to see win their party’s nomination, but the poll’s emphasis will continue to be on political and policy issues, said John M. Broder, The Times’s director of polling.

Forecasters will no doubt miss the data that Gallup provided in its nightly tracking poll in 2012, but Mr. Newport said it was his hope is that his organization is providing a higher public service.

“This may not be the focus that gets the most ‘clicks’ or short-term headlines,” Mr. Newport said in an email, “but is one which hopefully can make a real difference. Again, this isn’t based on a lack of faith in the process or the value of horse race polling in general, but rather a focus on how our particular firm’s contribution to the process can be most effective in keeping the voice of the people injected into the democratic process.”

Megan Thee-Brenan is a member of The Times’s news surveys department.

This is one of an occasional series of posts taking a deeper look at polling during this campaign cycle.