How Well Did the Pollsters Do?
The time to analyze the state pollsters is now. Here’s how we did it. For each pollster that ranat least five state presidential polls released after Oct. 1, each state polled by that pollster was examined separately.For each state-pollster combination, only the last poll was used. That poll was compared to the finalresult in the state. If, for example, a pollster said Obama was +3 in some state and the final resultwas Obama +1, the error was recorded as +2 (biased toward Obama). If the election result was Obama +5,then the pollster’s score was -2 (biased toward Romney).