Congratulations to Public Policy Polling, America’s most accurate pollster
by David Atkins
One of the funniest aspects of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the conservative marriage to Rasmussen and Gallup, who were telling them everything they wanted to hear for months despite all evidence to the contrary. Then there was the joke that is Dean Chambers “unskewing” all the polls to make them even more conservative. Every conservative dismissed Public Policy Polling a hack pollster far from reality. Even I distrusted what I felt to be their overly optimistic numbers in Colorado.
What Rasmussen was doing, of course, was weighting his polls by Party ID, which is a fluid measure and therefore a terrible baseline from which to weight a poll. Gallup, meanwhile, was drastically oversampling white voters in their likely voter model.
Well, after all the Sturm und Drang, Public Policy Polling has emerged the victor in a Fordham study of the year’s most accurate pollsters. Just as notably, internet pollster YouGov claimed 3rd place as well, lending huge gravitas to both their company and their methodology. As for Rasmussen and Gallup? They ended up near the very bottom.
1. PPP (D)*
1. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP*
3. YouGov*
4. Ipsos/Reuters*
5. Purple Strategies
6. NBC/WSJ
6. CBS/NYT
6. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Angus-Reid*
12. ABC/WP*
13. Pew Research*
13. Hartford Courant/UConn*
15. CNN/ORC
15. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
15. Politico/GWU/Battleground
15. FOX News
15. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
15. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
15. American Research Group
15. Gravis Marketing
23. Democracy Corps (D)*
24. Rasmussen
24. Gallup
26. NPR
27. National Journal*
28. AP/GfK
It’s a new day in pollster credibility land. Just as Nate Silver owned the conservative pundit establishment and threw it into a tailspin by the use of math, so too did the new pollsters on the block upend the traditional polling establishment.
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