The Pollsters Did a Great Job
- Not a single state was predicted incorrectly by pollster.com’s final map. The average error in predicting the state margins between the candidates was less than .5%.
- The popular vote is not completely in yet, but it seems to be conforming to pollster’s predictions.
- For now on when someone makes an argument devoid of facts or logic I shall refer to them as a “DJ Drummond” instead of a retard.
hey, drummond is a great last name :-)
anyone who thinks ben is being harsh, please read drummond’s post this morning:
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/11/05/i-dissent.php
and all this DOES NOT mean that polls are oracles. it just means that the poll is way more likely to be right than most of the alternative models people make up to delude themselves. to see a clear example of gross data manipulation to assuage one’s biases, look at this drummond post:
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/11/03/turners.php
FiveThirtyEight.com was notably extremely accurate as an analyst of polling data. Nate Silver clearly has a bright future ahead of him…
During the ten years I’ve followed polling (granted, more closely in the past five years, with all the data a click away on the internet…) the pollsters have improved quite noticeably. I think that because
– the models have gotten much better
– polling is a competitive business with low capital requirements
– everyone can quickly evaluate which pollsters made the best predictions
…there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes improvement in the methodology.
I assume that Ben G. was equally critical of all of those lefties who claimed that Bush “stole” Ohio when all of the polls predicted that he would win there, and those pollsters who predicted a massive increase in turnout this year…
I assume that Ben G. was equally critical of all of those lefties who claimed that Bush “stole” Ohio when all of the polls predicted that he would win there
you’re wrong. the leaked *exit polls* predicted he would win; though they shouldn’t be trusted for projections when the margin is narrow for a variety of reasons. and what the fuck kind of question is that anyway??? most people don’t blog for 4 years, and ben was a teenager back then. i doubt he had an opinion.
dj drummond is a retard. if you disagree, disagree. don’t rebut his retardation by bringing up the retardation of others; it’s a weak rhetorical strategy and makes you look like a petulant retard yourself.*
(my own strategy would not be to ask a rhetorical question, but use a search engine to check what ben blogged about back in 2004. in such a manner you’d find that he hasn’t been blogging for very long, so it’s pointless to wonder if he criticized the left-tards back in 2004 who were deluding themselves. it would have taken you 5 minutes to do a thorough check as we have things called archives on this weblog)
* i’ll label this a “glenn wishard.”