My list of good and bad polling companies

[Quixote1818]

The Good ones:

Zogby - Nailed the last election dead on. Uses realistic weight of Dems and Republicans.
Rasmussen - Very consistent, Solid Method
ARG - Solid Method
Pew - Solid Method and large sample
Harris - I only know they tend to agree with these other four polls.
Opinion Dynamics - Their numbers seem reasonable

The Bad ones:
Gallup - Weighted to heavy toward Republicans
Survey USA - They suck!
Mason Dixon - They are consistantly ten to twelve points off Zogby
Strategic Vision - This is a Republican Polling Company. Need I say more?

Feel free to add more or comment on each polling company's Methods. Thanks

[are_we_united_yet]

1. I thought

Quinnipiac was good

[featherman]

2. Nah... they are TERRIBLE

I've been googling to find examples of late 2000 polls and comparing them to actual results. But their archives are bad so I looking for some news articles that may still be up on the net.

[tritsofme]

3. Mason Dixon didn't do that bad in 2000

They had Florida as statistically tied in their final 2000 poll.

They showed Bush winning Ohio by 5% and he and won by 4%.

They saw the absolute dead heat in New Mexico in their final poll.

They showed PA going to Gore as well.

That's what I found with some quick googling, I have always found Mason-Dixon to be a pretty reliable polling firm, and while Zogby's regular telephone polls have been accurate in the past, his Interactive method did not work that well in 2002 and is not scientific.

[Quixote1818]

4. I only know them from their polling in New Mexico this year

They have been constantly between five and ten points below Zogby here. Perhaps thats just a fluke.

[tritsofme]

5. I don't understand how untested Zogby Interactive polling

becomes the gold standard.

[Quixote1818]

6. Take a look at this site which averages all the polls

http://tis.goringe.net/pop/scatter.html