The election has come and gone. … The result was a big victory for many number analysts. I wrote Tuesday about the polling aggregates circling around 303-332 electoral votes for Obama, with Florida being the closest state. Florida ended up being the tightest state. …
It should not be forgotten, however, that the only way the polling aggregators are able to call elections is because of pollsters. These are the people who dial number people at home and ask them their opinions on politics and other issues.
Many Republicans thought the polling – such as those polls from NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist, which ended up calling pretty much every state correctly – was “skewed”, with too many Democrats in the samples. I had mentioned over and over again that this was horrible reasoning: pollsters don’t weight for party identification. [cont.]
Harry Enten, The Guardian