National House Ballot, November 3rd

by: Chris Bowers

Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 21:02

Nov 02: Democrats +6.0%

Polls included in the calculation
(Polls can be found here and here)

Pollster	Mid-Date	Democrats	Republicans
Total	Nov 03	42.35	36.76
CNN	Oct 31	50	44
Rasmussen	Oct 29	38	42
Daily Kos	Oct 28	36	28
YouGov	Oct 26	47	41
NBC / WSJ	Oct 24	46	38
Rasmussen	Oct 22	38	42
Daily Kos	Oct 21	37	28
YouGuv	Oct 19	45	36
PPP	Oct 18	48	40
ABC / WaPo	Oct 17	51	39
Rasmussen	Oct 15	37	42
Daily Kos	Oct 14	35	29
YouGov	Oct 12	47	37
Rasmussen	Oct 08	39	41
CBS	Oct 07	46	33
Daily Kos	Oct 07	34	28
YouGov	Oct 05	47	37

Methodology:

1. Until the final six weeks of the election, take the simple mean of virtually all polls where the majority of interviews were conducted over the last 30 days.

2. During the final six weeks of an election, use the simple mean from the last 15 days.

3. Do not include Zogby Interactive polls and Columbus Dispatch polls, due to their horrendous past performance and questionable methodologies.

4. Do not include Strategic Vision polls, as it is starting to seem likely those are not real polls.

5. Include campaign-funded polls. Further, if there is more than one poll from a single organization, include all of them.

This is different from my 2006 and 2008 methodology in that it includes polls from 15 days out from an election, instead of only 8. Further, campaign funded polls, and multiple polls from a single polling firm, are now included. All of these changes were made to include more polls in the averages, since my previous methodology was about 10-20% less accurate than Pollster.com and fivethrityeight.com. Since they had already raised the bar so high, and since they will probably improve their methodologies for 2010 even more, it was time for Open Left to step it up.