I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
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Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
RIO RANCHO –Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com took a look at the how pollsters did in the 2008 election. His conclusion?
“Quite well,” according to a National Journal story.
First up, the national vote:
With an unknown number of provisional and late-arriving mail ballots still being counted, Barack Obama’s margin in the national popular vote stands at 6.5 percentage points. Our final trend estimate at Pollster.com gave Obama a 7.6-point advantage, a margin identical to the final RealClearPolitics average.
Considering the millions of votes cast so far, it’s unlikely the provisional and absentee ballots being counted will change the national average all that much.
Pollster.com average for polling in the final three weeks before Presidential election
And at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s final projection, a statistical model based on polling, demographics and other data, was a 46.2 to 52.3 percent win for Obama, or 6.1 percentage points, less than half a percentage point off the actual margin of victory.
Even more surprising is that Silver’s model predicted all but one state, Indiana, correctly. The model even showed Missouri as the closest race. The model also missed the one Nebraska electoral vote that went to Obama — Nebraska splits is electoral votes unlike any state except Maine.
New Mexico polling not as accurate
But what about New Mexico? Well, the polls weren’t as accurate here. Again from National Journal:
Some of the exceptions to the overall patterns may turn out to be most interesting: Three of the biggest polling errors came in western states with large Hispanic populations — California, Nevada and New Mexico. As of this writing, our trend estimates understated Obama’s margin by roughly 6 points in New Mexico and 5 points in Nevada and California. At least one pollster (PPP) has pointed to an understatement of Obama’s support among Latino voters as the primary source of the problem in Nevada. It will be interesting to see if other polls showed similar patterns.
As you can see in the Pollster.com average above, the average of New Mexico polls taken in the last week showed an 8.9 percent average lead for Barack Obama over John McCain. The current numbers, as of Wednesday afternoon, show a 14.9 percent margin of victory for Obama — a six point swing from the polls to the unofficial results.
So who was the most accurate pollster in New Mexico? That honor looks to go to Public Policy Polling (PPP), who conducted a poll on Oct. 28-30 and showed a 17 percentage point lead for Obama, 58 percent to 41 percent. The margin of error was +/- 2.5 percent.
The worst pollster was SurveyUSA, who showed just a 7 point lead for Barack Obama in New Mexico, 52 percent to 45 percent. SurveyUSA said 31 percent of the electorate would be Hispanic in New Mexico. Estimates have since shown Hispanic voters were 41 percent of the electorate in New Mexico.
The SurveyUSA poll was conducted from Oct. 29-31 and had a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percent.
More national polls
Using the October 21 to Election Day timeline for the national results, the polling was more accurate on the Pollster.com trendline. The relative support increased to 52 percent for Obama and 44.4 percent for McCain. But when the trendline is adjusted to give the most recent polls more weight, the trendline puts the race at 51.9 percent for Obama and 44 percent for McCain.
The current national results show a 52.3 percent to 46.2 percent victory for Barack Obama. The numbers will not change significantly even with uncounted ballots.
But which individual pollster came the closest to the 6.1 percent margin of victory?
The final Rasmussen Poll hit it dead on, 52 percent ot 46 percent. Fordham University (pdf) has already looked at pollster accuracy for the 2008 election and declared Rasmussen and Pew tied for the most accurate with YouGov/Polimetrix coming in third.
At the bottom of the heap was the Newsweek poll. The CBS/Times poll was second-to last in the national polling. IBD/TIPP, one of the most accurate pollsters of 2004, was down near the bottom of the pack in 15th out of the 23 national polls included.
