Obama approval rating gets a boost after Gallup tweaks its polling methodology

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President Obama’s job approval rating spiked this month, according to Gallup’s daily tracking survey, but the jump may be the result of a shift in the polling outlet’s survey methodology.

Since late 2011, President Obama has held steady at just under 50 percent saying they approved of the job he was doing and just under 50 percent saying they disapproved.

Earlier this month, the trend line moved in favor of the president, and on Thursday it sat at 53 percent positive and 42 negative — a greater job approval rating than Obama enjoyed after the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

However, this movement may have been provoked by a change in the pollster’s methodology, without which the president may have seen no change in job approval.

“As we began this election tracking program on Oct.1, our methodologists also recommended modifying and updating several procedures,” Gallup CEO Frank Newport wrote on Wednesday.

Gallup increased the proportion of cellphones in its tracking survey from 40 percent, and now splits its calls to cellphones and land lines evenly. Newport defended the switch, saying it was an attempt to “stay consistent with changes in the communication behavior and habits of those we are interviewing.”

“Gallup switched primarily to telephone interviewing a few decades ago based on the increased penetration of phones in American households and the increased costs of going into Americans’ homes for in-person interviewing,” Newport wrote. “Now we know, based on government statistics (and what we observe around us), that Americans are shifting rapidly from reliance on landline phones to mobile devices.”

Still, the timing of the change — one month out from the presidential election — has some on the right exasperated.

“What I can say is that it's problematic to alter one's methodological approach to polling elections just five weeks before the biggest election in a generation,” writes Jay Cost, polling analyst for the conservative Weekly Standard. “In fact, I think this is a highly inopportune time to make such a change; do it in the summer of 2012 or the winter of 2013, but for goodness sake not the fall of 2012!”

Obama approval rating gets a boost after Gallup tweaks its polling methodology - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.com

So apparently Gallup has folded to Axelrod's and Holder's strong arm tactics, threatening lawsuits against Gallup when the polls showed a dip in Obama's approval ratings.