Political Polls with the Best/Worst Records for Accuracy

This chart is must-study, for demonstrating which political pollsters proved to be spot-on with their polling, and which ones skewed either right or left and got it all (mainly) wrong.

The line down the middle represents closest to what actually happened in the Obama-Romney contest. Notice that the three polls closest to that accuracy line are Public Policy Polling, the Raleigh shop which works mainly for Democrats; YouGov; Ipsos-Reuters, which is an Internet poll; and dKos/SEIU, the progressive Dem outfit that no Republican would be caught dead quoting. But there you are! According to that center line, all four of these most highly accurate polls actually overstated Romney's numbers slightly.

Drop to the bottom and see the most inaccurate polls, all of which skewed wildly to the Romney side: Rasmussen (big surprise!), Gallup (another big surprise), and National Public Radio, which has been so beaten up by the right wing for years that they are probably afraid to be accurate.

Apparently, people who consume no other news than Fox News were flummoxed by the outcomes Tuesday night, because they had been told repeatedly that their boys were going to win, and Fox News had the polling to back it up.

Heh.