• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Aggregating the aggregators

AdamT

AdamT

DP Veteran
Joined
Jul 26, 2011
Messages
17,773
Reaction score
5,746
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Undisclosed
It's generally accepted that aggregate polls are more reliable than any individual polls when it comes to predicting elections. By combining the polls in various ways aggregators minimize the effect of outliers and try to achieve something like a consensus view of the race, from a statistical standpoint. I know of six different aggregator sites following the elections and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to aggregate the aggregators. Perhaps, similar to individual polls, this kind of averaging will produce an even more accurate result? Don't know, but here is the result as of 1:20 p.m. on November 5:

------------------Obama-------Romney-----------------

Electoral-vote.com: 294 - 220
Princeton Election Consortium: 303 - 235
Votamatic: 332 - 206
Pollster.com: 281 - 191
FiveThirtyEight: 307 - 231
RealClearPolitics*: 303 - 235

AVERAGE Prediction: Obama 303 - Romney 219


Note that some of the sites don't include states that they deemed statistically tied.

*The RCP number is from their map with no toss ups.
 
AdamT said:
It's generally accepted that aggregate polls are more reliable than any individual polls when it comes to predicting elections. By combining the polls in various ways aggregators minimize the effect of outliers and try to achieve something like a consensus view of the race, from a statistical standpoint. I know of six different aggregator sites following the elections and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to aggregate the aggregators. Perhaps, similar to individual polls, this kind of averaging will produce an even more accurate result? Don't know, but here is the result as of 1:20 p.m. on November 5:

------------------Obama-------Romney-----------------

Electoral-vote.com: 294 - 220
Princeton Election Consortium: 303 - 235
Votamatic: 332 - 206
Pollster.com: 281 - 191
FiveThirtyEight: 307 - 231
RealClearPolitics*: 303 - 235

AVERAGE Prediction: Obama 303 - Romney 219


Note that some of the sites don't include states that they deemed statistically tied.

*The RCP number is from their map with no toss ups.
Click to expand...

Nice to hear, you'll be surprised tomorrow!
 
You have limited time left to pre-election results declare that Obama is going to win. If you hurry, that should allow you enough time to post at least 400 or 500 more.
 
joko104 said:
You have limited time left to pre-election results declare that Obama is going to win. If you hurry, that should allow you enough time to post at least 400 or 500 more.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know you have a thing about talking about the election in the election forum. What we need is more Benghazi chat.
 
PPP had the audacity to put out its final poll on NC today. They have Obama up by 1. The problem is they oversampled dems by 13! When garbage like this is combined with other equally biased polls you don't get a clearer picture of the truth. Garbage in = garbage out.
 
jerry7 said:
PPP had the audacity to put out its final poll on NC today. They have Obama up by 1. The problem is they oversampled dems by 13! When garbage like this is combined with other equally biased polls you don't get a clearer picture of the truth. Garbage in = garbage out.
Click to expand...

Still not understanding the sampling thing, eh? :roll:
 
AdamT said:
Still not understanding the sampling thing, eh? :roll:
Click to expand...

Well for sure one of us doesn't. We will know shortly which side was right in their predictions.
 
jerry7 said:
Well for sure one of us doesn't. We will know shortly which side was right in their predictions.
Click to expand...

You got that right. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom