Oleg Zabluda's blog
Thursday, November 29, 2012
 
For 2012 presidential elections, among ~25 polling firms with 5+polls in last 21 days, there were plenty of polling...
For 2012 presidential elections, among ~25 polling firms with 5+polls in last 21 days, there were plenty of polling firms who beat in accuracy a  simple average of all polls.

Among 5 top poll aggregators, Nate Silver was most accurate [1,2] with RMSE=1.93. But he didn't beat simple average of those 5 (RMSE=1.67).

Among polling firms with 5+polls in last 21 days, most accurate was IBT/TIPP  with 11 polls and Avg.Err = 0.9%.

Average of polling errors:
wholly or partially online - 2.1%.
live telephone interviewers - 3.5%
robopolls by automated script - 5.0%
phone calls w/o cellphones - 4.7%
phone calls with cellphones - 3.5%

http://marginoferror.org/2012/11/08/aggregating-the-aggregates/

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/

[1] A very cool post, which shows all pollsters with their error margins, and Brier scores of all aggregators, as well as "coin toss" and "2008 repeat", according to which Nate Silver was not the best, but #3, suffering from apparently incorrect stated confidence:
http://appliedrationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the-most-accurate-2012-election-pundit/
http://appliedrationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the-most-accurate-2012-election-pundit/#comment-93
http://www.gwern.net/2012%20election%20predictions

[2] For Senate races, he was pretty much dead last out of five. Simple average was average:
http://marginoferror.org/2012/11/12/its-good-to-be-average/
http://marginoferror.org/2012/11/08/aggregating-the-aggregates/

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