Grading the Polls: It’s Buck, Bennet, and Maes

So we had two major polls going into the Colorado primaries: SurveyUSA and Public Policy Polling were on the line.

How’d they do against the actual results of Ken Buck over Jane Norton 52-48, Dan Maes over Scott McInnis 51-49, and Michael Bennet over Andrew Romanoff 54-46?

If I had a large sample size to use, I’d evaluate a pollster by taking the root mean square difference of all his results, but I don’t, so all I can do is take the results I have, nod gravely, and make a few comments. Let’s go.

Senate: For the Democrats, PPP had a two candidate split of 53-47 in favor of Bennet, while SUSA went 48-52 in favor of Romanoff. The actual was 54-46 Bennet, so PPP got this one rather close. Point.

For the Republicans, PPP said 51-49 Norton, and SUSA said 45-55 Buck. The actual was 48-52 buck, so SUSA was in the neighborhood, and PPP wasn’t close this time. Call it a tie so far.

And the tiebreak of course is the GOP Primary for Governor. This had to be a tough race to poll, too, with major, late-breaking news. PPP put McInnis up 51-49, and SUSA put Maes up 52-48. SUSA gets the right winner, and is ever so slightly closer to the actual totals, so SUSA wins Colorado 2-1.