What were the polls saying going into Ohio?

[Quixote1818]

I believe the vote was 54 to 44 Clinton. A ten point win, but how did that jive with the polls?

[SheilaT]

1. I did a simple Google search

(always remember that Google is your friend)
and here's a link to polls results just before the primary:
http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/ohio.html

and here's a link to the actual results:
http://inkslwc.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/final-ohio-primary-results-delegate-count-clinton-mccain-won/

I just grabbed the first links I found for each thing (poll and primary results), so if you want you could probably find many other sources.

[GoesTo11]

2. Lots of noise and Clinton maybe regaining some lead in the few days

Results were consistent with in the middle of the range of final polls. But Obama might have peaked around 2/29 (instead of 3/3) - even then there's a lot of noise, but more of the polls had it close on 2/29. The 3AM ad and Naftagate came in the few days before the primary and probably boosted Clinton by a few points.

Pollsters want to have a reputation for being right, so I think that if we look for trends of how polls compare with actual votes, they're usually about right. Surprises are surprising. But polls can't capture the impact of trends or events that occur after they are taken, and they often have errors when the situation is different then it has been in the past (e.g., large groups of voters that are suddenly much more motivated than in the past) because they have to in some way weight their samples and their models according to past patterns. My sense is that in most demographic groups, they're getting the numbers about right. But they've been off on the turnout within the demographic groups - sometimes favoring one candidate and sometimes the other - because of the intense campaigns we've seen this year.