An interesting comparison of pollsters

[Ediacara]

This election season pollsters have been all over the place. I compared the vote individual pollsters state polls available at Electoral-Vote, and plugged them into a calculator to find some not terribly surprising trends :-)

A few notes though: If a pollster hasn't polled a state, that state goes with its 2000 results. If a state is tied, it doesn't get added.

ARG: The only pollster that appears to have polled in every state (though I thought that Rasmussen and Zogby had...).

Kerry 290, Bush 222. A lot of ARG's polls are 2-4 weeks old though.

Gallup: I'm not shocked at all. If anything shows Gallup's bias it is:

Kerry 220, Bush 308. Again, Gallup suffers from the 2-4 week old poll problem.

Mason-Dixon: M-D as far as I know, isn't a very frequent pollster, and they have almost the same total as Gallup:

Kerry 230, Bush 308. Most of their polls are 2-4 weeks old, but the more recent ones show a trend toward Kerry.

Quinnipiac University: Has only polled five states, three of which were never considered competative. The results are the same as the official values for 2000, which with new totals is:

Kerry 260, Bush 278. They need to sample more states.

Rasmussen: Is a Republican, but tends to be a more accurate Republican than say.... Gallup. His totals are almost the same as 2000, with Minnesota as a tie:

Kerry 250, Bush 278. As has been pointed out, Rasmussen is showing a trend toward Kerry.

Research 2000: Doesn't do anough polls in enough states with enough frequency. There is no electoral majority in their map because Florida and New Hampshire are ties:

Kerry 253, Bush 254. All the polls are 2-6 weeks old.

Strategic Vision: This is a polling firm that creates polls specifically to dishearten Dems. I actually think they feed their BS to Gallup, and Gallup feeds it to CNN:

Kerry 207, Bush 316. By the way, what a double-speak Orwellian name: "Strategic Vision"...

Survey USA: Does a lot of polls in a lot of states, and many of them are very recent. It shows a good trend for Kerry:

Kerry 307, Bush 231. Most of the polls are less than 2 weeks old.

Zogby: Is a Democrat, but he's an accurate Democrat. Interestingly, Maine and Ohio are tied, and there are 66 electoral votes held by Bush that are within the MOE of the polls:

Kerry 301, Bush 213. Zogby does lots of polls and most are less than 2 weeks old.

You want an average? An average of all of them gives us:

Kerry: 257.5, Bush: 267.55.

BUT, an average of the four that in my opinion give the most accurate results, or at least do the most polls, with the highest frequency (ARG, Rasmussen, SUSA, and Zogby) yeilds:

Kerry: 287, Bush: 236.

[peacetalksforall]

1. Very, very helpful. Excellent. Thanks.