STATISTICS

Obama Leads in Rand Poll

Despite different sampling techniques.

Different data, same result. Amidst a debate over whether polls in the presidential race unfairly favor Barack Obama, a new Rand Corp. polling technique shows that even mixing up common methods yields pretty much the same result. According to the Rand poll, candidates Mitt Romney and Obama were in a pitched race up through the Democratic National Convention, and then the incumbent took the lead and the Republican nominee began to fall behind—much the same as in other national polls. “If you look at where we are and where we started, it seems to be pretty consistent with what you see in every other poll,” Rand economist Arie Kapteyn said.