Summary of Swing State Polsters (Rasmussen and ARG are terrible right-wing hacks)

[There Is No Spoon]

I took the last polls (or average of polls if they released more than one in the final week) released by the major pollsters in the swing states and the results are in the table below:



As you can see, almost all pollsters were skewed toward Republicans in this cycle, though some like Grove, PPP and Mellman were fairly neutral. You can also see how awful Rasmussen and ARG were, however - they both had more than a 4 point skew toward Republicans! Since the Republican bias was systematic (most pollsters had an issue with this), if I had to pick a reliable non-partisan pollster this cycle it would be Yougov (they're a British outfit). PPP is also very good, but with a small Democratic lean.

Also, something is weird with Ohio - Obama should have done 1 - 1.5 points better there than he did. Judging from Rove's reaction on Fox "news", I think there may have been some vote manipulation going on there. Husted needs to be in jail - I hope the Justice Department picks up on this anomaly.

BTW, here's Nate's pollster bias chart as updated in 2010. I think he'll need to update it after this election:

[jaxx]

They sure led the repubs down the yellow brick road.

[There Is No Spoon]

So the final results have changed - mostly in Obama's favor in the swing states, so I revisited this spreadsheet - updating the totals and sorting the pollsters differently.

Most accurate average pollsters on left, least accurate on right. Interesting how the Republican pollsters were hugely biased toward Republicans - who'd have guessed? They were also the least accurate.

[There Is No Spoon]

Oh, and Obama's lead is over 4.5 Million votes now - 50.9% - 47.4% - a solid 3.5% winning margin.

[cannae1]

I am afraid that I do not understand polling and polling firms.
Are they not in the business of obtaining and conveying accurate information?
What is to be gained by preferring one party over the other?
How does skewing toward one party further the goal of getting accurate information?

or, perhaps, getting accurate information is not the goal? The actual goal is to tell the client what the client wants to hear?