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Thursday, November 8, 2012

2012 An Early Pollster Post-Mortem

Posted by Eli Sanders on Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 12:35 PM

Sent yesterday by Paul Queary at Strategies 360. Pollsters are a persnickety bunch, so I'm sure we'll hear other takes from other Washington State pollsters. Still, this is interesting enough to stare at for a while, for now:

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Two things stand out about this table to me: 1) Quite a few of these "Actual Result"s appear to be from election night, and the final result will be different numbers (this is almost certain for president and R74, and possible for the other three). 2) I notice that S360 chose to plot the margin for the executive races (ex: "D+12") but the "yes" vote percentage for both the initiatives and referendum. Did they do that because it makes their totals look better than if they did percents all the way around or if they did margins all the way around?

Posted by G g on November 8, 2012 at 10:49 PM

@1: Again, you're an idiot. There are good and bad pollsters, but do you REALLY think they have never heard of cellphones and know nothing of these "young people" you pretend to know and understand?

You've been trotting this crap out every election. It makes you look stupid, not the pollsters.

Posted by bigyaz on November 8, 2012 at 4:19 PM

I think that I read somewhere yesterday that PPP was the most accurate nationwide for the Presidential race. And that Gallup really sucked, shocker.

Posted by MarkyMark on November 8, 2012 at 3:41 PM

No, Fnarf, I think it means Rasmussen knew that no degree of bias could make WA come out as Republican in a Presidential poll, so why bother?

Posted by N in Seattle

on November 8, 2012 at 3:34 PM

Odd that S360 would put out these numbers considering it clearly shows the best poller overall is SurveyUSA.

Posted by K on November 8, 2012 at 3:32 PM

@1, you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're lying about your son's phone. So tragic. Many of the polls, both here in WA and elsewhere, were extraordinarily accurate, as accurate as they have ever been. You sound EXACTLY like those wingnuts calling Nate Silver a fag because he uses math. Here's a tip: they know about the cell phone thing. You have no secret information there.

What stands out to me is that in WA, unlike most of the country, Rasmussen was pretty spot on. Does that mean we're more R than we let on?

Posted by Fnarf

on November 8, 2012 at 1:05 PM

God we suck. Going to have to go over their methodology with them and point out young people NEVER answer blocked calls and rarely answer polls anyway. They kept phoning my landline for my son since he never answered their calls to his cell. Which he never picked up.

Pollsters need to wake up and smell the 2012 Mayan Snowpocolypse already.

Posted by Will in Seattle