The Polls Were Right
By ThePresidentialCandidates.US on Nov 12, 2008 in Barack Obama
The final popular vote spread from the RealClearPolitics.com poll average was Barack Obama +6.5, the final spread at Pollster.com (which includes more polls than RCP) was Obama +7.6, and the final projection from FiveThirtyEight.com was Obama +6.1
The (not quite) final actual popular vote? Obama by 6.5
So much for the Bradley effect and the cellphone effect and all of the other things people were coming up with to explain why the polls may be off one direction or another. I suppose it’s possible there were some sort of “effects” but that they were counteracted by some others. But the final result remains the same, in the end the polls were pretty much right on in 2008.
FiveThirtyEight.com was particularly impressive in it’s projection abilities. It projected the correct winner for every single state except for Indiana where it projected a 1.5 point win for John McCain, but Obama ended up winning the state by 0.9 points. Indiana was one of the states where Obama had a huge organizational advantage (as McCain had largely ignored the state so perhaps that’s proof that such an organizational advantage can tip a close state.
As more votes are being counted & added to the final totals – Obama’s lead is growing. It’s now over 7.0
admin | Nov 23, 2008 | Reply
just looking back at this… the final numbers were 52.9% for Obama and 45.7% for McCain for a margin of 7.2 points for Obama.
admin | May 4, 2010 | Reply