Oh, I do have one slightly substantive beef with the presidentelectionpolls.com site as well. They have these overview pages, like
this one for the McCain vs Obama match-up. The overview simply lists the very latest poll out for each state, where available.
That's fine as far as it goes, though I'm not sure whether listing only the one last poll for each state (rather than the average of polls out for that state in the past X time, for example) is the best way to go.
But above that, the site then calculates the exact current balance of the race - right now, it has Barack Obama at 261 electoral college votes and John McCain at 266 -- based on this listing. Thats a bit much, IMO; pinning down such specific national numbers based on a list of polls of which some are brand new, and others date back from early January. Also a bit much to do that going only on the one last poll out from each state, when it might be an outlier and a comparison of the last few polls out (if available, of course) might give a more balanced look. Injects a lot of random volatility I think.
Then again, all they do is collect the numbers and present them FYI, and that's always useful. And they must spend a lot of time maintaining it, so I dont want to be ungrateful or anything.. they do good work, and seem to be getting very little acknowledgement for it, I've never seen a link to them.
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