I check there periodically and notice the individual states are fluttering around, primarily
but when I roll my mouse over them, the data underneath doesn’t seem to have changed. The little box references the same date and the same polls. Virginia, in particular, is confusing today. What’s the decoder ring, here? Anybody know?
Three possibilities:
Your web browser is displaying a cached version of the web page, resulting in outdated information. Look for the page date in the top left-hand corner of the page. You cannot miss it!
You are misinterpreting the details. In this case, hover over a state and look for the date of the last poll for that state. The dates vary among the states. If you look under the map you should see a list of the latest polls, and the states where they were taken.
If you really mean the states flutter or flicker as you hover over them, it may be a browser issue. IE is well known for such problems. You should not experience any flicker if you were to use a standards-compliant browser such as Firefox or Opera.
One thing to keep in mind is that if there are multiple polls within a given week, it averages them. So the mouseover poll values won’t necessarily match up with what the poll updates indicate.
For instance, there’s one VA poll today, 48 - 39 McCain. However, if you average the 4 most recent polls from VA, (here), you’ll get the 48-46 McCain result indicated on the map.
Moderator’s Note: I’m not seeing a debate here; this thread seems to be asking questions about various technical issues pertaining to a particular website, which really ought to have factual answers. Moving to GQ.
Sorry about that. That was my bad.
Ha! They’re often using University of Wisconsin polls. I used to work for their survey center, doing political and other phone surveys, during college.
This irrelevant factoid brought to you today by lack of caffeine.