

Gallup is very upset at Nate Silver  - ilamont
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/gallup_is_very_upset_at_nate_silver/

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adaml_623
From the Gallup blog post. _As our tradition has been in presidential election
years, Gallup's focus this year was on producing an estimate of the national
popular vote. We don’t “predict” the election, nor do we make estimates of the
Electoral College._

Seems like they really need to move with the times and not stick with
tradition.

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rprasad
Silver used the Gallup poll data and other polls' data to extrapoloate the
likely election day outcome. The polls did not extrapolate.

This is a fundamental disconnect between nerdsters and pollsters. Nerdsters
believe that polls are intended to predict the outcome of the election.
Pollsters know that polls are intended solely to indicate the preferences of
voters during the time period in which the poll was taken (i.e., a snapshot).

Thus, Gallup is pissed at Nate Silver because he is saying that they are wrong
about the outcome of the election. But that is not the purpose of the Gallup
poll--the purpose of the Gallup is to provide regular snapshots of voter
preferences over the course of the election. Gallup and the other polls leave
it to others to use this data to make conclusions and predictions.

