As Professor Jacobson pointed out the other day, there is an effort already underway to game the refs at the Supreme Court, similar to in the Obamacare case, by creating a media and political narrative that the Court’s legitimacy would be threatened if it were...

Meteorologists who examine their prognosticative skill often notice a curious phenomena. 

Forecasts for snow on December Twenty-fourths and Twenty-fifths have higher probabilities than forecasts for Twenty-sixths or Twenty-sevenths.  This disparity is inverted on the Fourth of July, where probabilities for rain are lower than for the Fifth.  Surely nature doesn’t have a...

I have received a good reaction to my post, If Nate Silver cannot be wrong, how can he be right?, in which I call non-statistical BS to Nate Silvermania.

Dan McLaughlin, On Polling Models, Skewed & Unskewed examines Nate Silvermania, and links to me for a non-numbers reason, which is good because I’m...

Averaging turnout models over the last four 2-year cycles, gets different results in the polling than the doom being peddled by Operation Demoralize.

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but given that Operation Demoralize is in full swing, anything that keeps spirits up for the final push through the finish...

The polling this year is insane.  Same state, same time period, wildly different results from poll to poll.

Rasmussen has Romney up 2 in Wisconsin; Marquette has Obama up 8. The Boston Globe (UNH Polling) has Scott Brown up 2; Suffolk has Elizabeth Warren up 7. And...

I have no implicit pro- or anti-Nate Silver bias. 

He was a journolist and in 2008 got some secret help with his predictions from the Obama campaign, but since joining The NY Times I think he has raised his game.

I find the whole focus on Silver and his presidential election “model” to be...

Noted University of California – Berkeley economist J. Bradford DeLong has figured out why Mitt Romney is so far ahead in the Gallup tracking poll of likely voters.

His theory  is that Obama supporters like him are only now figuring out where to vote, so they do not pass Gallup’s likely voter screen.  Apparently,...

It seems that all anyone is talking about is polling showing Obama pulling ahead.  Some of the polling says a little, some says a lot at least in certain swing states, particularly Ohio.

I understand and have listened to all of the explanation as to why the polling is skewed by the...

The ancient “heathen proverb,” often applied to those who attempt to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, seems appropriate to Republican presidential candidates and Pennsylvania.

New GOP-commissioned poll puts Romney 1 percentage point behind in Pa.

In contrast to other recent surveys, a new Pennsylvania poll commissioned by the Republican State Committee shows Mitt Romney...

Defeatism is so last weekend.

Via WaPo:

Last week’s Democratic National Convention helped President Obama improve his standing against Republican Mitt Romney, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but did little to reduce voter concern about his handling of the economy.

The survey shows that the race remains close among likely voters,...

PPP finds Todd Akin still leads Claire McCaskill, and that the numbers have not changed much since the controversy broke:

Missouri voters strongly disagree with the comments Todd Akin made about abortion over the weekend, but it hasn’t moved the numbers a whole lot in the Senate race. Akin leads Claire McCaskill...

Paul Rahe (via Instapundit) compares the polling punditry to those who could not see the collapse of the Soviet Union coming because they were too focused on minutiae:

When I read Nate Silver, Sean Trende, Charlie Cook, Jay Cost, and the others who make a profession of political prognostication, I pay close...

Jay Cost doesn’t see malevolent intent, just a history of oversampling Democrats consistently across a variety of polling organizations:

The clear answer is: they skew Democratic. In fact, every recent registered voter poll with party spreads I could identify had a Democratic advantage that exceeded the quarter-century trend. And the average of...

I posted last night about how Obama’s support among a core constituency, Jews in New York, has cracked.

Support for Obama also is cracking among blacks in North Carolina:

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among  African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy  Polling shows.

The poll...

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Poll open until 10 a.m. Eastern, Thursday, March 1, 2012.