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Pollster.com: Blogs


New: "Pollster Compare" Senate ChartsNovember 5 2006

With less than 36 hours to go before the polls open, and the final poll releases coming at a furious pace, I want to point out a new set of charts we added to Pollster earlier this weekend that should help those puzzling over contradictory results in recent Senate polls.  We call them "Pollster Compare" charts and, as of last night you can see them for the 12 most competitive Senate races.

These charts allow you to compare the trend in the vote margin between the various pollsters in each race and spot the "house effects" that make one set of results consistently different across.   Each race has two charts.  One simply connects the dots for each pollster, adding a regression "local trend line" that estimates the combined trend picked up by all telephone polls.  A good example is the Maryland Senate race (copied below).  Note that the three automated polls by SurveyUSA have all shown the race virtually tied, while other polls (including the automated surveys from Rasmussen Reports) show a narrowing race, with Democrat Ben Cardin typically leading by roughly five percentage points.

MDbyPollsterA_sml.jpg

Another comparison of interest is the Tennessee Senate race.  We posted an

New! Put Our Charts on Your BlogNovember 1 2006

We are very pleased to introduce some exciting new upgrades to our Pollster.com charts! Some changes are small, but if you're a blogger (or anyone else with a web site) we have one huge new feature we hope you will want to try. Here are the details

  • Timeframe selection -- By popular demand, you can now view charts from several different "timeframes:" polls since October 15, polls since September 1 and all data available (our classic view). You will find a simple pull-down menu below each chart letting you select the view.
  • Roll-over pop-up info - if you aim your cursor pointer at any of the points on the chart, it will now pop-up the percentage for that point, the name of the poll and its release date.
  • Embed Chart - This is the big one for bloggers or anyone else with a web site. At the bottom of each chart you will now find a box labeled "Embed Chart," that works just like the one on YouTube. It includes some HTML code that when copied into a blog post or web page will produce a small version of that chart on your blog...just like this...

The chart will update -- on your site -- whenever we add new data. Your readers can use the controls to turn data points, trend lines and confidence intervals on and off. Please, go ahead and give it a try (and when you do, make sure to use the Control-A keyboard shortcut to select all of the HTML code). As of tonight, our charts a

Yes, We Have Maps!October 23 2006

And scorecards! And summary tables!

Apologies for the continuing noise and dust, but today we added several new and long awaited features here on Pollster.com: Interactive maps and national level scorecards for races for the U.S. Senate and Governor.

The maps and tables display both last-5-poll averages and our classification of each race based on the approximate statistical significance of candidate leads. A more detailed description of how we derive these numbers follows after the jump.

As with any new software there are bound to be a few glitches we have overlooked. If you experience any difficulty, please do not hesitate to drop us a line and describe the problem.

And yes, we will also be adding a map and scorecard for races for the U.S. House very soon.  Stay tuned. And if all goes well, we should have even more new features to tell you about by the end of the week. Hopefully, we've saved the best for last.

Credit where it is due: The interactive Flash map applications were designed by the talented folks at Constituent Dynamics, the same company that is part of the team that brings you the Majority Watch surveys. We saw their congressional district map, liked it and asked if we could borrow it. One thing led to another, and we decided to bring them on board to help create some cust

House Race Data, Live Links & MoreOctober 10 2006

Hear that hammering and pounding? It's probably the construction crew here at Pollster.com that has been hard at work adding few new features to the site lately, with a lot more to come. Here's what's new tonight:

  • By popular demand, we have now posted data for 20 of the most competitive U.S. House races and will be adding many more races in the next few days. For the moment, we do not yet have House race charts, but those will be coming soon as well. For now, you can access the House race data anywhere within Pollster by clicking on the "Polls tab" as the top of the page.
  • Data tables on the chart pages now have live hyperlinks to source pages. The links are not the conventional style (underlined text) and so may not be obvious, but clicking on the pollster name in any data table should bring up the source web page (the original article or pollster release, with full results were available). We have kept the original source links, some of which may no longer be active.
  • We have also made a number of minor tweaks to appearance of the charts and tables. Unfortunately, one feature that is not working quite right as of tonight is the check box on the left of the data tables that should allow you to "check" and "uncheck" individual polls to remove polls from the chart and put them back again.  The problem is that "re-checking" does not make the poll reappear --although you can
About Those New Menu ChoicesOctober 1 2006

Sharp eyed regular readers will notice some changes to the Pollster Blog menus.  First of all, we have changed the third tab to read "Pollster Blog" and added some additional choices below.

But don't worry, the "Mystery Pollster" (yours truly) is still here.  We changed the menus to better reflect the fact that contributions will come from many authors, not just me.  The main blog page (http://www.pollster.com/blogs/) will continue to function as it has since our launch, displaying posts from all authors, including both myself and Charles Franklin.  The specific tabs for Mark Blumenthal, Charles Franklin and our new Pollster's Corner are intended to allow readers to find recent posts by our various contributors more easily.  But everything will also appear on the "main" blog page, so you need not change your bookmarks.  

We are most excited about the new "Guest Pollster's Corner," which we hope to provide a forum for regular "bloggy" contributions from a wide array of pollsters of all varieties:  media and campaign; Democrat, Republican and non-partisan.  The first contribution, from Gallup's Frank Newport, will follow shortly.  

One minor note:  I will be off for the next 24 hours or so for Yom Kippur.  I wish an easy fast to all those observing with me.