Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Kos is full of it

Over at Daily Kos, Kos himself calls our Pennsylvania poll 'ridiculous' and predicts a 15 point victory for Clinton.

In Texas, Kos predicted a 12 point victory for Obama, while we said Clinton would win by 6. She won by 4, which made him off by 16 points off and us off by 2 points.

If he's off by 16 points again in Pennsylvania, Obama will win by one, which will put off our poll by one single point.

I think the only thing 'ridiculous' here is Kos so flippantly writing off our poll, when our recent track record is a heck of a lot better than this.

4/24 Update: Since Kos is linking to this post we'd love for you to take the time to look at our track record this cycle. Our Pennsylvania polls obviously were way off and we're learning from it but overall we have done a pretty good job and hope to bounce back quickly.

10 comments:

John said...

Hear hear!

I don't have anything against Kos, but I do have something against anyone who is willing to flippantly disregard the results of a poll because it doesn't feel right.

Don't forget how PPP was denounced in some circles for showing Obama's big NC lead. Those polls have been largely vindicated.

Anonymous said...

I think most people are going to be skeptical. I for one want this poll to be accurate, but it's just too soon to start believing it. Maybe in a week if the poll results reveal that it wasn't just a one time lopsided poll for Obama.

Dave Anderson said...

Hold on a sec, there! Kos didn't predict a 15-point win by Clinton. He said "if the vote were held today..." That said, I thought his remarks were over-the-top, too.

Question: if Obama walks away from Texas with 98 delegates and Clinton with 95, how did Clinton win, exactly? I understand the prediction had to do with the percentage of the popular vote, but isn't that pretty much meaningless when the object is to win delegates? It's sort of like saying the car that finished a race in second place is the winner because it got better gas mileage than the one that finished first.

bmkj said...

Your poll got a lot of attention and I hope you got it right -- you should post a diary on DKos after the election pointing to your record with the title, "Eat Your Words, Kos".

I'll recommend your diary!

B said...

haha, I will take note to not criticize PPP! Actually though, I thought the WI shift you caught was terrific. I'm not shocked that Obama's pulled close, outspending right now at 5:1.

Anonymous said...

Kos is an Obama hack. He's just trying to raise the bar for Hillary, so Obama can win by just beating the spread. The problem for him though is that nobody cares what he says. People know he's a joke.

Abe said...

Seems that Kos actually said "8% feels right" in terms of a Clinton victory in Penn. The actual was 9.3% difference.

So PPP was about 12 to 13 % off with this poll and was in fact a substantial outlier. Kos was pretty close.

There were demands for apologies by Kos, does that hold true now for PPP?

Anonymous said...

Boy, you really showed Kos with your accuracy regarding Pennsylvania, eh? Too bad you didn't listen to him origianally, and just disregard your own poll.

Matt Willard said...

Funny that you guys never post the response rate on your survey. In the interest of transparency, I think you should. There are only so many things that weighting can handle. What's the response rate? 5%?

Anonymous said...

I love how you say you're "learning" from the Pennsylvania results. I'm sure you folks are learning to become better pollsters. Are you learning to stop being arrogant pricks about other people's opinions in a notoriously unpredictable field? Based on the update in this post, it looks like you guys are the same jerks you always were. Every other independent pollster can do this without getting into fights with people; look at how SurveyUSA won the hearts and minds of the political establishment and learn from them.

 
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