New Hampshire Primary 11/18

Two New Hampshire primary polls released today.  Gingrich sneaks into 2nd but Romney still holds his huge lead of over 20 points.

GOP National Update (11/22)

Updated with two new polls.  I also took the averages and gave the graph including tomorrows dropout of the old Washington Post/ABC poll, so it's actually 1 day in the future.

Romney is only .1 % above Gingrich now, and Gingrich still appears to be rising.  Note that my averages lag about 10 days due to the nature of them being a 20 day moving average.  (If Gingrich's peak on my graph is 11/25, it would actually mean that it happened about 10 days earlier on 11/15).

It also appears likely that Paul may have overtaken Perry already, assuming the trend keeps up.

New Hampshire Primary 11/12

There are only two polls which meet my standards to be used for November 1-November 18 averages in New Hampshire.

The CNN Poll is expired, so the only fair and balanced poll to go by is the Bloomberg one.  I'm not going to include a graph because only two polls are involved thus far and it doesn't really help to gain an understanding of the trends.

There is a new Magellan Strategies poll out which shows Gingrich at 26%, but it is Republican affiliated, so it is not counted.  It still seems reasonable that Gingrich is higher than 11% though.

Iowa Caucus 11/12

I figured I'd post this early because I'm a nice guy.

There were so many bad polls to wade through for Iowa.  We Ask America seemed a bit fishy, but they did fit the criteria.  Insider Advantage refuses to poll Santorum, so they were eliminated.  I really don't get why you wouldn't include Santorum in your poll.  Maybe they googled Santorum?

Current semi-weighted averages:
Cain: 22.6
Romney: 17.4
Paul: 16.0
Gingrich: 11.3
Bachmann: 8.0
Perry: 6.5
Santorum: 3.9
Huntsman: 0.9

Sorry Pew Research

Here's the link to their slanted poll:

http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-questionnaires/11-17-11%20Politics%20topline%20for%20release.pdf

They polled for approval of Romney, Perry, Gingrich, and Cain BEFORE asking for GOP nomination.

Therefore, this poll is rejected due to it being slanted towards Romney, Perry, Gingrich, and Cain, as well as slanted against Bachmann, Huntsman, Paul, and Santorum.

Early state primaries coming soon

If I get 25 followers I'll start doing Iowa as well.  50, I'll do New Hampshire.  100 I'll do South Carolina and Florida.

I just want to make sure there's a demand for fair and balanced poll averages and graphs before I put hours of effort in.

National GOP Nomination 11/18

I am going to update this every time a new poll released meets my standards.  The graph will always start at November because the field solidified in early October, and therefore a lot of October polls were taken with Christie and Palin speculation still alive.  Here's the polls that meet the fair and balanced standards so far (Sorry FOX News, you're not fair and balanced due to your slanted lead-in questions!)

Poller                                                       Type              Size    Bach    Cain    Ging    Hunt    Paul    Perr   Romn    Sant
CNN/ORC International (11/11 - 11/13)         R Only           480        6       14        22         3        8        12       24        3
McClatchy/Marist (11/08 - 11/10)                 R + R-lean ind  347        5       17        19         1       10        8        23        1
Washington Post/ABC News (10/31 - 11/03)  R + R-lean ind  438       4       23        12         1        8        13       24        1
[too old - cutoff]
Quinnipiac (10/25 - 10/31)                           R + R-lean ind  869        4      30        10          2        7         8        23        1
CNN/ORC International (10/14 -10/16)         R only             416        6      25         8           1        9        13      26         2

Current semi-weighted average:
Romney - 23.7
Cain - 18.0
Gingrich - 17.7
Perry - 11.1
Paul - 8.6
Bachmann - 5.0
Huntsman - 1.7
Santorum - 1.7

Welcome (Why my averages are better than RCP)

Hello.  I'm a statistician.  I hope you bookmark my page for credible, up to the minute polls and graphs regarding the 2012 race.  I'm frustrated with media bias so I thought I'd make this blog for others like me who are as well.

I used to like RealClearPolitics until I realized that they were including polls in their averages that were Democrat or Republican affiliated  or included "lead-in questions" which both lead to biased results.  I hope my blog will gain enough of a following to influence RCP to follow my lead, but maybe that will never happen.

I am therefore only including polls that fit these criteria:

1. No Democrat/Republican affiliations.  This will help to reduce bias.
2. No lead-in questions.  If you're only asked how you feel about Candidate X vs Obama and then Candidate Y vs Obama (Candidate Z ignored), and then asked to make your choice, the results will be skewed towards X and Y for psychological reasons, and Candidate Z will be slighted as a result.
3. Publicly available free crosstabs must be available.  Sorry, Rasmussen, if you're not going to share your full results with everyone, then that reduces your credibility in my estimation.
4. Only data with a mean polling date within 20 days of the current date will be counted.  (Example, if its 11/30, then a 11/7 - 11/13 poll will be counted because its average date is 11/10 which puts it within 20 days.  If it was 11/6 - 11/13, its average date would be 11/9.5 which puts it outside of 20 days.  That poll wouldn't be counted.)
5. Only phone polls will be counted.  Online polls are proven to be less accurate.
6. The averages will be semi-weighted.  By that I mean half of the average will be weighted by number of people polled, and half of the average will weight all the polls equally.
7. If both Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents are included in a poll, I will include both because the average will be more representative of who will be showing up at primaries.