Post-Election Judging Of The National Polls

For months we have been inundated with polls on the presidential campaign -- and regular readers of this blog saw a lot of those polls. But now the election is over, and it's time to ask just how accurate were those polls? Which polls were the most accurate and which ones seemed to be polling in some dream world? Fortunately Dr. Costas Panagopoulos, the director of the Fordham University Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy, has already done that comparison for us.

Dr. Panagopoulos compared the pre-election polls with the election day results, and then ranked the polls according to their accuracy. The chart above was made by  John Sides at The Monkey Cage, using the information from Dr. Panagopoulos's study.

I was happy to see that my two favorite polls (the ones I trusted the most) scored very well on accuracy -- Public Policy Polling and Pew Research Center. In fact, Public Policy Polling was rated in the Fordham study as the most accurate poll of all. How did PPP do it? Here's what Tom Jensen of PPP had to say:

 "We just projected that African-American, Hispanic, and young voter turnout would be as high in 2012 as it was in 2008, and we weighted our polls accordingly. When you look at polls that succeeded and those that failed that was the difference."

I think I need to point out that two of the most well-known polls, the Rasmussen Poll and the Gallup Poll, did very poorly this year. They need to look at how they are doing things and make some adjustments before the next election (both inflated the poll margin in favor of Romney). Their reputation has taken a hit, and they need to do much better next time.

Here are the best and worst national polls for 2012:

BEST
Public Policy Polling
Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
Ipsos/Reuters
YouGov
Pew Research
Hartford Courant/Univ. of Connecticut
Angus Reid
ABC/Washington Post

WORST
APGfK
National Journal
Rasmussen
NPR
Gallup
Democracy Corps