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Qs about polls
Of course I'm addicted and I've been checking fivethirtyeight, pollster, electoral-vote daily. Usually cnn and msnbc, sometimes realclearpolitics.
There's a clear difference between the close Obama map the MSM has, and the landslide victory the interwebs types are showing. I get that the MSM is more "conservative" in their estimates, but I'm still confused.
1) Wouldn't "conservative" mean more states in the toss up column? That's not the difference between these. The MSM has one set of toss up states, the others have those all going blue, and a mostly seperate set of toss up states (which the MSM has going red).
2) This would lead me to believe that the MSM is more centrist in their polling, while fivethirtyeight and the others skew liberal, and someone like Zogby skews conservative. But this is something I've never understood. Don't they all want to be right? Or are the trying to influence votes somehow?
3) These sights totally devoted to polling seem to have their sh!t together. They spend a lot of time explaining their methods and laying out arguments against those polls they disagree with. If they're wrong, how am I supposed to tell?
I know it's all speculation for another 5 days, but I'll be really interested to see who's the most correct.
Re: Qs about polls
See this might be Obama's undoing - people can not sit back on the laurels and think, Obama's going to win no matter what. Everyone need to keep pushing to the bitter end.
my read shelf:
I think one reason 538 skews more to the left is because it doesn't solely rely on a "traditional" voter model. It assumes that more young people, more first-time voters, more minorities, and more people without home phone lines will be voting this year. It gives different weights to polls based on these criteria, among other things. I think Zogby relies on more traditional polling methods, which is why he's considered more conservative.