How the 2012 election polling really was skewed – for Mitt Romney

[marmar]

How the 2012 election polling really was skewed – for Mitt Romney
Many in the GOP were sure polls were biased against their guy. In fact, they undershot Obama's win by an embarrassing margin

Harry J Enten
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 November 2012


There is a fear runs through any good prognosticator's bones when dealing with a seemingly close election. Polls are not perfect. They are instruments to judge public opinion, and they can be wrong.

2012 also had the added feature of Republican confidence. You didn't have to look very far to hear the word "skewed" in response to polling data. The polls had too many Democrats, or so the claim went. Republicans were also banking on national polls that were kinder to Romney than state surveys.

The national polls, as it turned out, were not systematically biased against Republican Mitt Romney. The final surveys pointed to President Obama's re-election, and they were right. That does not mean, however, that the polls weren't biased. It won't be until all the ballots are counted that we can access who the most accurate pollster was on the state level, but we do know that Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen were off the mark. Right now, we can only make statements about national polling.

We know that the national surveys tilted heavily against Obama. When we don't count any one survey date twice (that is, tracking polls such as from Gallup only have each day counted once), we can say that the average of national polls taken after the first debate through election day had Obama winning by 0.3 percentage points. President Obama currently has a 3.2pt lead nationally and it seems like he may finish with an edge above 3.5pt. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/21/2012-election-polling-skewed-for-mitt-romney

[Downtown Hound]

1. Maybe the media will now stop reporting only Rasmussen and Gallup

Hahaha! Who am I kidding? As far as the corporate media is concerned, those are the only two polls that exist.