However, I don't think PPP has had that lean in months.

...the CNN poll showing Romney up 1 in FL.

OTOH, Sam Wang has Obama's EV prediction up to 299 (still one update to come for the day in about an hour, though).

In any event, the whole PPP issue came about initially when they tweeted a couple of nights ago that they were polling CO, IA, and NH, and that Obama was doing better in the first than either of the other two. Well, they've already released IA and NH numbers; any word from them on CO yet?

but the good thing was he was at 50%

So overall, moving in the right direction, and time is running out for Romney.

They're up and down depending on the polls. It's nothing personal, but it seems it'd be a helluva lot easier looking at the polls yourself and seeing where Obama stands.

...I shrugged it off, saying the average would drop again once those PPP state polls come out. It looks as if my prediction abilities are as good as Nate's!

aggregate snapshots. The poll averages at TPM and RCP are all factoring the bogus/outlier polls.

Gallup is singlehandedly keeping Mitt close in the national average.

that they include other factors besides polls. Poll are highly weighted, but they are still normalized with other data.

BTW it's up to 67.9%.

PS, I also like http://horsesass.org/

The day before the elections, we will have a more or less clear picture of who will win. Then Nate will change his odds accordingly. Odds in October are useless.

Right now, Obama is up 66.9% to 33.1%. To my eyes, that's slightly more that 2:1 odds. But Nate is on record as saying that constitutes only a "modest" or "narrow" lead. So, what odds would you need for a "solid" lead?

Perhaps that's it?

Especially if he keeps plugging in bullshit polls like Gravis and Rasmussen.

Hell....Gallup has now become a joke and yet he still plugs it into to his lame ass machine!

...will it slice an onion?

Have you read my comments here?

To paraphrase his book title there is a lot of noise in the system in spite of data points. Only one poll will count.

From Sam Wang who appeared on NPR with the Great Nate:

And his yo yo calculations

It's messing up Nate's models. And if this starts up all over again it's only going to harm us.

I can get on him for using Gravis but other then that I think he is very fair and very intelligent. 67% is a damn good number and one that I would rather have then what Romney has which would be 33%. Or why people get mad at Intrade which is betting, or what I call informed "guessing".
There is no way to know if Nate is correct or not until Nov. 6th. I am pretty happy with anything over 60%. All polling firms have bad polls but Nate is not cherry picking. It is a pretty fair way to do this and Obama is still ahead. Chill people. We are starting to attack those that are clearly not Republicans. PPP had a few bad polls but I don't think they are out to get Obama or anything.

How do we know there aren't several Gravis's in his statistics?

When I first started to look at Nate's forecasts I was impressed BUT then I started to learn more aboout how he configures his model and I started to lose faith in his abilities.

My biggest complaint with Nate is that he includes Gravis Marketing in his forecasts.

Seriously, how can Nate include Gravis and give them 5 bars, when Gravis polls are totally shams.


Consider this, one of their latest polls shows Obama with an approval rating of 39%.
Consider this, one of their polls earlier this month showed Romney getting 45% of the black vote.
Consider this, his polling firm consists of a couple of people who use a computer to auto dial and has no experience in polling before.


Yet Nate uses this firm in his forecast which influences his predictions.

Lastly, Nate bases most of his forecast off of polling, whcih means his forecast is influenced by a whole bunch of right-wing push polls that are being released by right-leaning pollsters AND they make up most of his latest polling averages.


If Nate wants to be taken seriously, then he MUST look into the internals of every single poll released AND if a certain poll showsd internals that are juts not believeable (things like Romney getting 45% black vote, things like undersampling hispanics, etc) then Nate should either dismiss that poll or not give it any weighting in his forecast at all.