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To: M. Dodge Thomas
If you don’t like the projections of poll aggregators like Sam Wang or Nate Silver, blame the polls, not the aggregators.

Not going to agree with you there. Aggregation does nothing to make polling results more accurate, all it does is allow the "aggregator" to stake out a middle-of-the-road claim that will of course place them closer to the end result than roughly half of the individual pollsters, whom the aggregator will use highlight his "success" (along with a wide enough MOE to account for reality to be different than anyone's guesses).

It is quite true that it's GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) as well -- and the input polls are garbage, even more so than usual.

35 posted on 11/06/2012 11:23:18 AM PST by kevkrom (If a wise man has an argument with a foolish man, the fool only rages or laughs...)
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To: kevkrom
"Aggregation does nothing to make polling results more accurate."

Aggregation (meta-analysis) substantially improves the "accuracy" (for example, margin-of-error & confidence level) of the analysis of the *combined* data-sets.

38 posted on 11/06/2012 11:36:52 AM PST by M. Dodge Thomas (million)
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To: kevkrom; Laissez-faire capitalist; diamond6

At the end of the day, Silver and Wong’s predictions were *extremely* accurate:

http://election.princeton.edu/2012/11/07/after-the-storm/

We may not have liked the results of their techniques this time around.

But after producing these sorts of results three elections in a row with impressive and increasing accuracy and precision, we ignore them at out peril in terms (for example) of judging the ongoing effectiveness of campaign strategies.


50 posted on 11/07/2012 2:06:30 PM PST by M. Dodge Thomas (million)
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