Brett LoGiurato, of Business Insider, exclaims Surprise! You'll Never Guess Who Was The Most Accurate Pollster This Election Season... and seems surprised that a study by Fordham's political science department finds "two left-leaning Democratic pollsters" are at the top of the list.
Fordham's political science department has published a list of the most and least accurate pollsters of the 2012 campaign between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Here's the full list (polls with an asterisk were more favorable to Obama, and polls without were more favorable to Romney):
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
This ranking will not "surprise" many of us here who have become quite used to seeing distortions and missed calls from Gallup, Rasmussen, Gravis, NewsMax, and others near the bottom. We've become sophisticated consumers of polls compared to many prestigious news organizations who too often merely regurgitated faulty polls with no editorial context, or evaluation of their track record, and controversy within the academic community about methodological variations.
Although, not discussed in this article, it is clear that many of these pollsters under-counted the Latino community, used faulty assumption for likely voter screens, under-counted more Democratically oriented cell phone users, and erred in estimating voter turnout, and adjusting results to fit Party affiliation profiles.
As one example, Gallup is reported excluded anyone who did not vote in the 2008 election in their likely voter model which automatically excluded higher rates of newly registered Democratic voters.
We need to make a fairly big deal of holding these polling organizations accountable for their performance, and lack of it, as some at the bottom seemed to be more dedicated to creating spin than to providing sound data to readers.
These organizations should not be used in future elections by news organizations and other's who wish to be taken seriously with regard to journalistic integrity - or even by political organizations and bloggers who need reliable information to make sound strategic decisions.