Reply #62: If I understand correctly what you're saying [View All]

Your argument hinges on giving substantially more weight to three polls ending on Novebmer 4 and 5 than to 40 consecutive polls prior to those 3 polls and two polls that kind of followed those three polls, the vast majority of which indicated substantially greater Democratic margins.

I believe that there are two potential rationales for doing that -- one, that Pew and Gallup are substantially more accurate than the other generic polls; and two, that it has to do with the timing. I don't believe that we have significant (or any) evidence that Pew and Gallup are better than the rest. I'm more inclined to think that it has to do with the timing. But then we have the two latest polls shooting right back up there, and we also have substantial evidence that a Democratic surge did in fact occur on the last day, because the 10% of voters who say they decided on the last day demonstrated a Democratic margin of 25% -- and that's without adding the 4% that we need to add because the 25% figure is "adjusted" down.

In summary, I see little reason to judge the true prediction based on three selected polls that are surrounded by a vast amount of other polls with radically different results.