how far do BG polls lag behind national polls?

[montana500]

Anyone know?

[David Dunham]

1. No lag at this point.

[jefferson_dem]

2. No lag i don't think. The big prob is that some of the state polls are

commissioned by rinky-dink neophytes and partisan operations who have no clue as to how to reliably perform survey research. So results are likely to vary.

[Awsi Dooger]

3. That's a very good point

MOE for state polls is understated. Anyone who puts more reliance on state polls than national polls is kidding themselves, even for the best pollsters.

Back to the original question. I looked at state polls in relation to national for both '96 and '00. I used the final net deviation from the national popular vote average for each state to evaluate. For instance, let's say Nevada is 4 points more GOP than the nation, which is close to accurate. I tried to find the date where the averages of reliable national polls and reliable state polls came closest to that margin. For instance, let's say Bush led Gore by 3 points nationally. The Nevada average poll differential should be 7 points.

Admittedly, not all states cooperated in this study. Or not enough state polls, period. 1996 was better than 2000, since Bush's national lead was overestimated in 2000.

But there was a definite verification that state polls DO lag, even late in the race. The average was about 4 days, but the mean closer to 3. In smaller states with fewer reported polls, it could be nearly a week, especially in '96.

[pabloseb]

4. BG states much better than nation

ALL national polls who show its battleground results have Kerry about 6 to 8 pts up in BGs compared to the whole national sample (i.e. if a national poll has * 2pts up, then Kerry will be 4 to 6 pts up in the battlegrounds). There can be no lag since it's one and only poll. It's just that Kerry is doing better in the swing states than in the whole country. So I predict that the popular vote will be very close, but Kerry will win the electoral college.