This is a quick and dirty site I threw together with a jupyter notebook that generates charts for individual pollsters.
I find that insane new polls come out every day and I never know how different they are from the previous polls that particular pollster has taken. It could be that pollster is always that insane, or it could just be an extreme outlier. So I did my best to separate out each pollster.
Nate Rakich's How To Read Polls in 2020 has the following tips:
- Check the pollster’s track record.
- Avoid comparisons between pollsters.
- Note who’s being polled.
- Pay attention to the margin of error.
- Consider the source.
- If a poll has an odd result, there might be a reason for it.
- That said, don’t try to outguess or “unskew” the polls.
- Heed averages, not outliers.
- In the aggregate, polls are pretty accurate but not perfect.
- Polls are snapshots, not predictions.
The purpose of this site is so I can more easily accomplish #2. I want to compare a poll to that pollster's previous polls. Numbers 1 and 3-10 are not at all the purpose of this site. Toward that end, here are some helpful links: