our guest is frank newport, the editor in chief of gallup polls. "washington classroom" is a partnership with george mason university and the washington center. this semester's class is focusing on presidential politicians. issues shaping the company, with a look back at past elections. >> to the students joining us from the washington classroom here in washington, d.c., representing universities and colleges around the country, we want to focus today on polls and focus group and the latest from the gallup organization this week, showing that barack obama is ahead, 49% to 45%, the editor in chief of the gallup poll is joining us here in our studios, frank newport. thank you for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> as we look at the poll, you tell your audience all the time, it's one snapshot, a snapshot in time. doesn't tell you where the country is going, but tells youy the country is at this moment. >> well, a couple of -- it can tell you where it is going if you look at the trend. we have economiced confidence, consumer confidence, we track daily.

. >> frank newport, those are just three examples of how a campaign, the dukakis campaign riding the polls in the summer and came to a crashing defeat in the fall of 2008. the willy horton became a metaphor of other issues in 1988 the dukakis campaign faced. this is the pre-internet age but gives you a sense of how one issue moved the public opinion. >> there are a lot of examples and of course what we're getting into here is this broad view of how campaigns are won and lost, and it has to do sometimes with the single issue spots like that, commercials that happened to hit a responsive chord from the public. you have to give a lot of credit so to speak to the people behind the scenes sitting around a table like this. lot of people decry it say it's bad, we have so much spots to shift public opinion but that's the environment we live in, products and services, we have commercials that move back and forth so that's how we live today is that people respond kind of intuitively, kind of respond emotionally to these kind of ads and the persons themselves, and that can make somebody win or

. >> and so, frank newport, these foe kucus groups play an import role in this process. >> they do. i've moderated, like peter hart, a lot of focus groups, primarily for business and industry myself, so, i'm well acquainted with them. they have their place, but it is complicated to really discuss them. as you saw there, they are designed to elicit responses in more depth than you would get from just asking survey questions. now, what peopter hart there wa doing top of mind reaction. that isn't a bad idea. now, notice, that was a republican group. and we all know intuition and quick reactions are important, because a lot of what we do is not guided byrationalbrain. he was saying top of mind to republican voters. even if he had been commissioned by obama, it was good. that at least gave him a starting point, saying, president obama, is the way that some people who are republicans tend to think of you, this is what comes out. now, typically, how that would be used is -- i heard the world "weak" come out. you would take that, to see what degree they played or didn't play. the way we use