Wrong Again - polls are not always accurate

This surprised me. It was my distinct impression that an average of many polls accurately predicted past elections within a few percentage points.

Open Left:: Or, Maybe Primary Polls Just Suck

Final seven-poll New Hampshire average in 2000 (results in parenthesis):

McCain: 40.3% (48.5%)
Bush: 31.7% (30.3%)

Gore: 51.1% (49.7%)
Bradley: 41.9% (45.6%)

Eight years ago, the final polls were off by 9.6% in the Republican campaign, and 5.1% in the Democratic campaign. That is about as bad as the polls performed this time around. As the National Council on Public Polls wrote eight years ago:

So maybe nothing mysterious or unprecedented happened on Tuesday. Maybe it’s just hard to poll primaries.

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