From the write-up:
“Clinton appeared to reverse the trend toward Obama with a strong day on Feb. 1 -- the first day of interviewing after the Thursday night debate between the two candidates in Hollywood. But Saturday's polling showed a strong day for Obama, bringing the candidates back closer together in the latest three-day rolling average.”That's more than a little interesting. Rasmussen and Gallup both showed Clinton widening the gap right after the debate. That means that most pundits (myself included) got the debate wrong. Once again, America's women found themselves drawn to Hillary when she wasn't spending her time launching attacks.
But in yesterday's sample, Rasmussen and Gallup produced very different results. Why would that be? The obvious answer is that it was Saturday, the toughest day of the week for polling. (Mark Blumenthal has eloquently detailed the challenges associated with Saturday polling at pollster.com, for the curious.) In general this cycle, Saturday polling has hurt Obama. It tends to undersample those who are out and about, and has a particularly large effect in robopolls, where many respondents hang up when they're busy. Gallup has a much more robust methodology, and though the poll is fairly new, we've seen much less variation between its Saturday and weekday samples that with Rasmussen.
So if I were a betting man, I'd wager that Gallup is closer to the mark here, and Rasmussen, too, will show a tightening race tomorrow. Worth noting: Sunday is the best day of the week for pollsters. Look for the final day of tracking polls to show this race tightening back up (Rasmussen) or evenly split (Gallup). And, because we're talking about trends, look for Obama to ride that surge into a better than expected performance on Tuesday.
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