Gallup Launches Election 2012 Site

Today marks the launch of our Gallup Election 2012 site. This is a valuable resource for everyone interested in tracking the vastly interesting, but still nascent, 2012 battle for the Republican presidential nomination, and after that the general election next year.

Our job at Gallup is to monitor the presidential race from the perspective of the American people. The new site presents the data we feel provide the most valuable insights and understanding of the dynamics of the efforts by a wide range of potential candidates to gain the GOP nomination. After the nominee is known, the site will focus on providing daily information on the general election faceoff between President Obama and the winning Republican nominee.

We are tracking some of this information on a daily basis and updating it on the site each Tuesday. All of the data are available for download. The site will always have the latest Gallup data on the election, including the stories and analyses written by Gallup editors.

The main focus of Gallup's GOP nomination tracking this year is the various potential candidates'name recognition and Positive Intensity Scores.

Positive Intensity Scores represent a new innovation, as I explain in some detail here. The Positive Intensity Score in essence splits the traditional trial heat ballot into its two components -- the candidates' name recognition, and their image from the public's perspective. The Positive Intensity Score is based on the assumption that intense emotions about the candidates are what matter. It is based on the percentage of those who recognize a candidate who have a strongly favorable opinion, minus those who recognize the candidate and have a strongly unfavorable opinion.

Already, as an example, the Positive Intensity Score tracking provides important insights into the potential candidacies of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Georgia businessman Herman Cain. These two are not in the top tier of potential candidates in terms of name identification. This means they will not show up high on the list in the traditional trial heat ballot. Both Bachmann and Cain, however, generate strong favorable scores among those who know them, meaning they have the potential to be significant factors in the race as they become better known. Bachmann, as a matter of fact, is already becoming better known, with a name identification that has risen from 52% earlier this year to 60% today.

We are about to see the official announcement by Newt Gingrich that he is running for president. Our analysis shows that Gingrich, although very well known among Republicans, has a below average Positive Intensity Score. He is not generating a lot of excitement among his fellow Republicans at the moment. We will able to track his progress in this endeavor in the weeks to come.

Other Republican candidates will be announcing their official campaigns ahead. In each instance, our Gallup data as reported on the Election 2012 site will help you understand exactly where the candidate stands in reference to all other candidates in the race.

We will be updating our traditional trial heat ballot among Republicans on a monthly basis, a measure whose significance will increase as the candidates become better known. We recently aggregated the results of three such updates, and looked in depth at the demographics of support for the candidates at this early stage of the election. The trial heat ballot also provides excellent historical perspective on the race. At about this point in 1967, for example, Richard Nixon had the support of 43% of Republicans nationwide in Gallup's trial heat ballot, way ahead of the two candidates in second place, Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan, both of whom had only 7% support. That can be contrasted with the situation today, in which no potential Republican candidate has more than 20% support.

We also are monitoring the potential Republican electorate in terms of issue importance. We split the potential Republican electorate into four groups based on their choice of top issue salience (government size/power, economy/business, social/moral issues, foreign policy/national security) and will continue to report regularly on how these segments of voters are viewing the candidates.

The Election 2012 site will include monthly updates on the "generic" presidential ballot, pitting Obama against "the Republican candidate." These updates give us a continuing, broad indication of how the general election next year might shape up in these months before the exact Republican nominee is known.

The Election 2012 site will include links to every story and analysis written by Gallup editors on the election, taking advantage of the combined decades of experience we have in monitoring and making sense out of what potential votes are thinking and feeling. We will also have additional innovations in terms of measuring the people's views of the candidates that we will announce as we go along.

All in all, don't miss it! The Gallup Election 2012 site is the premier one-stop-shop for polling information about the forthcoming presidential election.