Monday, November 08, 2004

Which pollsters won and lost with pre-election polls?

We were inundated with polls up until Election Day. Here is a link to an article (with explanations) about which polls were the winners and losers. In other words, who was close to accurate with their polls, and who was way off? The link has the entire result set (not long to read), but here are a couple of note:

Winners: Battleground, Pew.
Predictions: Bush 51.2, Kerry 47.8.
Result: Exactly right.

Semi-winner: CBS/NYT (assuming the polls weren't forged)
Predictions: Bush by 3%
Result: Margin right, though they failed to allocate undecideds.

Loser: Gallup.
Predictions: 49-49, with Kerry getting between 90 - 100% of undecideds!
Result: Way off, though they would have been right if they had allocated undecideds 50/50 (as they actually went).

Loser: Fox News (sorry, guys).
Predictions: 48-46, with Kerry winning.
Result: Off by 5%...WAY off!

BIG Loser: Zogby

Commentary by RCP on Zogby:

As we all know, Zogby had been on record for months saying that Kerry was going to win this race. Despite his final tracking poll that put Bush ahead by one point nationally, Zogby's polling at the state level reflected his belief that Kerry was going to be the beneficiary of huge turnout - especially among the youth vote. The result is that Zogby missed three of the eleven states he polled in (FL, IA, and NM), had a relatively high error rate across the board (3.8%), and his numbers generally skewed in favor of John Kerry.

Adding insult to injury, Zogby's bizarre election day antics calling for "surprises" in Colorado and Virginia and a decisive 311 electoral vote victory for Kerry suggest he was relying on (not to mention taken in by) the badly skewed early exit poll data.

Let's be honest: Zogby's conduct this year bordered on outrageous. No other independent pollster was out making public predictions of a John Kerry or George W. Bush victory months before hand. And no other pollster decided to wait until 5:30pm Eastern time on election day to post their final numbers.