Flashback: The Most Accurate Polls of 2008 and 2012

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SOURCE FOR 2012: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/?_r=0



Among the more prolific polling firms, the most accurate by this measure was TIPP, which conducted a national tracking poll for Investors’ Business Daily. Relative to other national polls, their results seemed to be Democratic-leaning at the time they were published. However, it turned out that most polling firms underestimated Obama’s performance, so those that had what had seemed to be Democratic-leaning results were often closest to the final outcome.

Conversely, polls that were Republican-leaning relative to the consensus did especially poorly.

Among telephone-based polling firms that conducted a significant number of state-by-state surveys, the best results came from CNN, Mellman and Grove Insight. The latter two conducted most of their polls on behalf of liberal-leaning organizations. However, as I mentioned, since the polling consensus underestimated Obama’s performance somewhat, the polls that seemed to be Democratic-leaning often came closest to the mark.

Several polling firms got notably poor results, on the other hand. For the second consecutive election — the same was true in 2010 — Rasmussen Reports polls had a statistical bias toward Republicans, overestimating Romney’s performance by about four percentage points, on average. Polls by American Research Group and Mason-Dixon also largely missed the mark. Mason-Dixon might be given a pass since it has a decent track record over the longer term, while American Research Group has long been unreliable.

SOURCE FOR 2008: http://www.politisite.com/2012/10/01/analysis-most-accurate-political-polls-from-2008-presidential-election/





The Pew Research Center and Rasmussen Reports were the most accurate in predicting the results of the 2008 election, according to a new analysis by Fordham University political scientist Costas Panagopoulos.

The Fordham analysis ranks 23 survey research organizations on their final, national pre-election polls, as reported on pollster.com.

On average, the polls slightly overestimated Obama’s strength. The final polls showed the Democratic ahead by an average of 7.52 percentage points — 1.37 percentage points above his current 6.15-point popular vote lead. Seventeen of the 23 surveys overstated Obama’s final victory level, while four underestimated it. Only two — Rasmussen and Pew — were spot on.

Here is the list –

1T. Rasmussen (11/1-3)**

1T. Pew (10/29-11/1)**

3. YouGov/Polimetrix (10/18-11/1)

4. Harris Interactive (10/20-27)

5. GWU (Lake/Tarrance) (11/2-3)*