As you can see, Survey USA was the night's big loser, at least as far as pollsters go. They were estimating a good night for Clinton, including a 12% win in Indiana and a mere 5% win for Obama in North Carolina. On the opposite end, Zogby was the big winner. Zogby came closest to the North Carolina result by predicting a 14% victory for him in that state. Zogby was also the only pollster to have predicted an Obama win in Indiana, though Clinton ended up winning by about that margin. Of course, lest any pollster get a big head, these pollsters have been in the opposite positions (Zogby as the big loser and Survey USA as the big winner) in earlier primaries this year.UPDATE: I should've added that Public Policy Polling was also fairly accurate relative to the other pollsters and, unlike Zogby, they had the winner right in both states.
UPDATE: Who needs polls? As one of our readers points out:
"Probabay the best prediction was Poblano at the 538 website, who's demographic model predicted Obama +18 in NC (final was +15), and Clinton +2 in Indiana (right on). Poblano also came very close in Penn."
4 comments:
Probabay the best prediction was Poblano at the 538 website, who's demographic model predicted Obama +18 in NC (final was +15), and Clinton +2 in Indiana (right on). Poblano also came very close in Penn.
Poblano did get the 51%-49% split in IN, but he missed the turnout used to get that split by over 325,000 voters. That is a 35% error rate for his prediction model.
Sorry, but Zogby could not be the "Big Winner". He is the ONLY one who called a race wrong.
Interesting point about Zogby, but I might have to disagree a bit. After all, Democrats award delegates proportionally rather than winner-take-all. Thus, getting closest to the actual margins is key in determining how delegates will be divided and it is less important who wins or loses the state.
If this was general election polling, then I would certainly agree with you.
Post a Comment