Nate Silver on Credibility Problems in PollingNate Silverbyline‚ Oct. 03‚ 2008(Ed note: If you do not read Nate Silver to follow presidential polling data, you are really missing out. His October 2 piece on Real Clear Politics was particularly illuminating and we include it below) Last week, I discussed Real Clear Politics' decision to exclude the Research 2000 daily tracking poll from their national averages. After a lengthy discussion with RCP founder John McIntyre, I decided to defend them, pointing out that while RCP may have a debatable framework for deciding which polls they do or do not include, they at least appeared to have applied this framework consistently. My gut-level takeaway from my conversation with McIntyre was somewhat different from what I represented, however. My gut-level feeling was that RCP was in fact cherry-picking those results that were to its liking, and then coming up with post-facto rationalizations to justify its decisions. |