Weighting survey data based on social background characteristics suchas age, education, gender, and race is a standard practice in publicopinion polling. By adjusting the composition of their samples toconform to known demographic characteristics of the population,pollsters greatly increase the accuracy of their results. However,with the exception of the Zogby Poll, most major pollingorganizations, including the Gallup Poll, have strongly opposedweighting their data based on party identification. This oppositionis understandable. Party identification is not a fixedcharacteristic of the electorate. It is a political attitude thatcan vary over time. As a result, most pollsters believe that thereis no way of accurately determining the underlying distribution ofparty identification in the population for weighting purposes.