Unlikely Voter

Conservative views on polls, science, technology, and policy

Archive for the ‘ Commentary ’ Category

I didn’t intend the second stage of my pollster grading series to come eleven days after my first stage, but then again I didn’t expect to suffer my worst cold in a long time, either.

So with my apologies for the unavoidable delay, we continue after a lost week by checking in on Public Policy Polling.

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Like everyone else, Rasmussen Reports got two key Senate races wrong, making them big surprises on election night: Colorado and Nevada. Rasmussen also underestimated Barbara Boxer’s lead in California.

My mission since election day has been to find out why everyone got these three states in particular so wrong, while others were accurate. In the process, I’ve taken a good look at Rasmussen’s accuracy this year.

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The New York Times’ Nate Silver is now going after Rasmussen Reports again. After the primaries he said Rasmussen was in his crosshairs for ducking out on a number of races by not polling primaries.

According to Silver’s own chart though, Rasmussen polled twice as often as the second place firm, and is still Silver’s primary target. Funny that.

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Election Night Open Thread

By on November 2, 2010

Good Evening! Below the fold is an Associated Press chart of calls in progress.

4:25pm PT: AP has called it for Leahy, Coats, Paul, and DeMint. No surprises yet.

4:40pm PT: Portman not a surprising hold for Republicans, but it was called for him. Kasich’s inability to get a call yet just underscores his polling collapse in recent weeks.

More updates below the fold.

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While I do find it amusing that the final Fox poll and the final PPP poll of Washington favor the opposite of what their respective biases are supposed to suggest (Fox shows Murray +2 and PPP shows Rossi +2), today I am content to wait for returns and find what I can in them.

Because starting tomorrow the offseason work begins.

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Now that Nate Silver has declared PPP to have a Republican house effect, all eyes turn to CNN to see what kind of house effect they must have.

Has the whole polling world gone Republican? Why does CNN get the results it does? Jon Ralston and Ed Morrissey have questions.

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Last week I addressed the new polls by TCJ Research, an arm of The Conservative Journal. Other than the polling operation being new and untested, my biggest complaint was a lack of transparency.

TCJ Research is beginning to answer questions and become more transparent.

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By request, I’ve decided to take a look at just what kind of electorate the Public Policy Polling screening of Likely Voters seems to be predicting. To do this I will use recent PPP polls from two states: California, which went for Barack Obama heavily, and West Virginia, where Obama’s popularity has never been that hot.

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A website called The Conservative Journal is releasing polls now, with an archive available on the website.

The polls are definitely making the rounds on the right, thanks to results that are relatively good for Republicans. But are they worth the pixels they’re printed on? It’s hard to say.

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I notice a trend: when people mock reasonable sample sizes (as though multiplying out 500 terms isn’t powerful enough math for anyone), it only seems to be when their preferred candidates are losing, and never the other way.

Scientific polling, based on the laws of probability and the compounding of likelihoods, is a mathematical activity. It’s all about the numbers. Without the numbers no poll has meaning. That’s why I highlight key facts like Margins of Error.

Your typical internal poll release is very low on numbers and instead is a one page memo. Those releases can be based on sound polling practices, but they are firstly designed to push an agenda. When I see this new Illinois poll, I am reminded of an internal poll release.

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Nate Silver at the New York Times suggested yesterday that generic ballot polling might underestimate how well the Democrats will do in November.

Henry Olson at NRO countered by describing how it might shade the other way.

I think it’s the best tool we’ve got, and partisan bias is somewhere in the middle. Here’s why.

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Fox News has a set of polls out, some of which I will be posting on in depth as appropriate. What’s interesting about them though is they are apparently conducted through a new service by Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports. The service is called Pulse Opinion Research, and reportedly anyone can do a poll through it for $600.

This could change the polling landscape.

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