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By Bill Altreuter

FiveThirtyEight is the sort of thing I love: statistical analysis of the polling data for the election. Pundits and talking heads (like the late Tim Russert, or Cokie Roberts) like to talk about polling data, but they seldom delve into what the data means, or how it was derived, or whether what the numbers seem to indicate even makes sense. FiveThirtyEight (the number of electoral votes) does. For example, a recent post discusses the so-called "Bradley Effect"-- the notion that people misreport their actual voting intention so as not to appear racist. FiveThirtyEight notes that there is a way to see if this has happened, then looks at the polling data from the primarys, and compares it to the actual results. Interestingly, they find that Obama tends to outperform the polls. The site is full of interesting stuff like that. Most interestingly, it tracks the polls state by state, so that we can get a sense of what the electoral vote might look like. Very worthwhile.(Via Rafe Colburn.)

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on August 13, 2008 (boomark / email).