Nate Silver vs. Public Policy Polling

by Aaron Blake, The Fix, Washington Post, Septempber 11, 2013.

Data modeling whiz Nate Silver and automated pollster Public Policy Polling lit up the Twitter-sphere this afternoon — or at least the polling/political nerd section of it.

At issue was the prolific Democratic pollster’s decision, disclosed Wednesday, not to publish the results of a poll on the Colorado state Senate recalls that the firm did not believe to be accurate.  The poll showed state Sen. Angela Giron losing by 12 points in a strongly Democratic district. Which is the exact margin that she lost by on Tuesday.

“We did a poll last weekend in Colorado Senate District 3 and found that voters intended to recall Angela Giron by a 12 point margin, 54/42,” PPP’s Tom Jensen wrote. “In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll. It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers becaue [sic] she was indeed recalled by 12 points.”

Several pollsters took issue with the decision not to publish the poll, which led PPP to defend its decision. And soon, Silver weighed in.

Read the Twitter comments back and forth at this address: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/09/11/nate-silver-vs-public-policy-polling/