Accuracy of Super Tuesday Democratic Delegate Estimate (Some Initial Evidence)

On Monday, I used poll averages provided by pollster.com to generate predictions as to how the Democratic delegates would be divided on Super Tuesday. We are still waiting to find out about over 500 delegates, so I haven't been able to do a full check on my estimates. However, using delegate totals from CNN I am able to check how accurate I was in five states.

These tallies show that the estimates were pretty close in 4 of the 5 states, but way off in the fifth. I was off by 1 delegate for UT, 2 delegates for CT and DE, and 3 delegates in OK. However, the predictions were off by 15 delegates in MN. I'm not too surprised the MN estimate was off. First, it was a caucus state, and polling in caucus states tends to be far more difficult. Second, rather than an average from several polls, I had to rely on a single poll that was conducted January 18th-27th. The timing of the poll was particularly problematic, as it came too early to pick up any late shifts toward Obama.

Keep in mind that I did not make any predictions for AK, ID, KS, ND, and AR because there was no polling in any of those states. Obama ended up winning the delegates from those 5 states by a margin of 61-44.

I predicted that Clinton would win 52.4% of the delegates available from the states where polling data did exist...she is presently winning 51.1% from those states (again, with over 500 still to be determined).

I'll post another accuracy check once we have more information about the 500 or so outstanding delegates.