Which Pollster Performed Best?

Which pollsters should you trust going into the 2012 elections? Nate Silver grades them based on their 2010 performances and finds that Rasmussen Reports both “badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.” On average, Rasmussen overestimated the GOP candidate’s performance by four points. The company’s blown calls include a poll in Hawaii that was 40 points off the actual result—the largest error in Silver’s database, which includes all polls since 1998. For better predictors, turn to SurveyUSA and Quinnipiac, both of which showed little bias and came close to the final tallies.