Our regularly scheduled forecast update for Wednesday slipped through the cracks. The FiveThirtyEight forecast was not much changed based on Wednesday’s polls, however, with Barack Obama’s chances of winning the Electoral College increasing incrementally to 65.7 percent from 64.8 percent.

We’ll catch up with Thursday’s polls with the next update. In the meantime, I’m going to focus on one particular survey, the Gallup national tracking poll.

The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Wednesday, he was ahead by six points among likely voters. Mr. Romney’s advantage grew further, to seven points, when Gallup updated its numbers on Thursday afternoon.

The Gallup poll is accounted for in the forecast model, along with all other state and national surveys.

However, its results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case.