# electoral-vote.com revealed **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 1, 2004, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346 "2004-11-01T16:19:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346/41 "2004-11-02T04:25:11Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > So Electoral-Votes is focusing on Zogby? Is there any evidence that he’s cherry-picking his polls to show the results he wants? No. The front page map shows the most recent poll for each state, that’s it. Zogby seems to get his out the door faster, so there are often a lot of his showing on that map. There’s also, as of a few days ago, a map that averages recent polls if you prefer that. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346/42 "2004-11-02T05:28:02Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > So Electoral-Votes is focusing on Zogby? Is there any evidence that he’s cherry-picking his polls to show the results he wants? > > What makes the Zogby poll better than anyone else’s? As far as I’m concerned, Zogby is one of the most questionable polls. Yes, I know he was accurate in 2000, but that may be a fluke. His methodology is quite different than others. For one thing, he’s assigning most of the undecideds to Kerry - something that I’m not sure is valid. We have a small sample set of previous elections which show that trend. > > And of course, his methodology seems to drive a lot of variance, since two polls of his taken one day apart differed by 15 points. No, the latest polling data from [electoral-vote.com](http://electoral-vote.com) has the most polls from Rasmussen (261 of 937). You made a point that there was a discrepency between the “electoral map” sites and the latest poll numbers. My point was that the pollers have fair discrepencies between their own popular vote and electoral vote tallies. And to top it off, their tallies just in the last day (your values from 10/31 and mine from 11/01). Perhaps this explains some of the discrepencies. Another example of this is from Rasmussen: Electoral votes: Bush 222 Kerry 186 Toss-ups 130 Popular votes: Bush 48.8% Kerry 47.4%. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346/43 "2004-11-02T05:47:49Z")
Frankly, I think there’s just too much variance in all the poll results to draw any meaningful conclusion. When you see two polls taken on the same day among the same sized sample of the same group (likely voters) differ by as much as 15%, it tells you that the pollsters don’t have a good handle on what’s going on. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346/44 "2004-11-02T15:10:05Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > So Electoral-Votes is focusing on Zogby? Is there any evidence that he’s cherry-picking his polls to show the results he wants? No, the site uses the _latest_ poll regardless of its source. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346/45 "2004-11-02T15:15:39Z")
All the poll results used on electoral-vote, electionprojection, and race2004 are listed too, if you’d prefer to crunch them yourself. Time histories of each are available graphically as well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/electoral-vote-com-revealed/272346.md?page=2)