Thursday, April 15, 2004
New sidebar addition: state polling map
DC's Political Report compiles state polling results for the presidential race into the handy little map you see on the right. Dark blue/red means the candidates are separated by at least twice the margin of error (typically at least a 9-10% difference); light blue/red means the separation is between one and two margins of error (typically 4-9% difference); green means the separation is less than one margin of error, making the state a tossup.
I do have a quibble with the coloring, in that it's only based on the most recent poll. This means outlier polls make the map fluctuate a lot. A few weeks ago Minnesota was green and Wisconsin was dark blue. New York was even green at one point. It'd be better to average the three most recent polls. In any case, I find the map useful as a way to see at a glance roughly how the presidential race is going, but you can't take individual results too seriously.
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I do have a quibble with the coloring, in that it's only based on the most recent poll. This means outlier polls make the map fluctuate a lot. A few weeks ago Minnesota was green and Wisconsin was dark blue. New York was even green at one point. It'd be better to average the three most recent polls. In any case, I find the map useful as a way to see at a glance roughly how the presidential race is going, but you can't take individual results too seriously.
© 2004 Odd Hours
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