Talk:Statewide opinion polling for the 2008 United States presidential election

Note from the Editor

I want to thank you all for your suggestions and work on this article. You have contributed greatly to the success and professional appearance of the site. Note that I consider every suggestion with as much care as you took in writing them. Please continue to make suggestions and comments about the article. Your friend PollShark (talk) 06:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Predicted Results

This is a response to JamesMLane's edit summary content about the need for this section: YES. It's not particularly relevant who is ahead in a single state, as the presidency is decided by an aggregation of the state results through the Electoral College. Sure, individual readers could aggregate the results for themselves if they want to know how the big picture looks (and realize that national opinion polls which do not segregate their results by state are dubious indicators at best), but as PollShark has been so diligent as to keep the aggregation up to date for everyone, no one else has to duplicate the work (unless they want to check PS's work). Sketch051 (talk) 18:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

An aggregation is interesting -- in the runup to 2004 I myself was addicted to http://www.electoral-vote.com for that type of total (except that the Votemaster there averages the most recent polls instead of just using one). Nevertheless, that doesn't mean it's appropriate Wikipedia content. We generally avoid, as unencylopedic, compilations of this sort that change constantly. There's no guarantee that PollShark or anyone else will continue the updating.

At a minimum, to let the reader know how current the information is, I suggest that the compilation note when it was last updated. JamesMLane t c 02:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

State Links

I've made two substantial changes to the state links, neither of which affects the data reflected: (1) The links in the summary (Predicted Results) now point to the state-specific poll results in the main article (2) The state name headers of the state-specific poll result sections are now links to the state's article.

I did this for a string of reasons: the article is long, and scrolling is a nuisance; if you are clicking on a state's name in the results summary, you're more likely interested in the poll results which put that state in a particular candidate's column than in general information about the state; but if you're already looking at a state-specific set of results, you very likely might want to read more about the state to gain a greater understanding of the significance of the poll results.

Hopefully PollShark will still be able to easily cut & paste state references into the appropriate candidate's column as new data are available without any significant increase in the workload.Sketch051 (talk) 00:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

New York

The latest poll shouldn't be included in the electoral thing because it includes Condoleezza Rice.

The poll does include Secretary Rice, however the particular questions that include the general election matchup does not and is not the information I placed on the website. PollShark

?

What is the difference between the wikipedia article that we are talking about now and this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_by_state_for_the_United_States_presidential_election%2C_2008

68.45.9.206 (talk) 20:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

That one has a color-coded map for the hypothetical matchups, this one has tabular data. I see no particular reason why they need to be kept separate, as long as a merged version has: 1) the state-by-state poll data, 2) the tabular aggregate of electoral votes, and 3) the color-coded map. Sketch051 (talk) 16:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Marshie71 (talk) 21:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Electoral Map

It's inaccurate for the state of Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Wisconsin. I propose getting rid of it as we already have a text comparison section, and maintaining the graphic isn't being done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChPr (talk • contribs) 19:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Old version

New version

Uploaded a new map. New version is higher quality, language-neutral, easier to edit, can be seen side by side, and includes map showing electoral strength. I don't know how recent the data is, though. I just copied the data from the old map, which said April 17.

Szu (talk) 04:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

CT should be colored light blue for Clinton vs McCain. Jayavarman1 (talk) 05:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Clinton is in fact winning by an average of 5.3%, which is within the margin of darker red. The Evil Spartan (talk) 07:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Size of Polls

The page that was merged with this one listed how many people were polled in each poll; I find that information useful when doing statistical analysis, and I'd like to see it return. PsyMar (talk) 00:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Map redux

I have yet another version of the map. Fairly similar to the one above, except that now we indicate states with very heavy learnings (>10%). Thus the text might look something like this:

Clinton vs. McCain	Obama vs. McCain
Clinton leads by over 10% (40)	Obama leads by over 10% (59)
Clinton leads by over 5% (176)	Obama leads by over 5% (187)
Clinton leads over 1%(229)	Obama leads over 1% (221)
Within 1% (50)	Within 1% (25)
McCain leads over 1% (259)	McCain leads over 1% (292)
McCain leads by over 5% (217)	McCain leads by over 5% (235)
McCain leads by over 10% (126)	McCain leads by over 10% (147)
Totals	Totals
McCain leads: 259 electoral votes Clinton leads: 229 electoral votes	McCain leads: 292 electoral votes Obama leads: 221 electoral votes

What do you think of the new format? Do you like the really dark states and the appearance? If not, we might try a scheme like this one. The Evil Spartan (talk) 08:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)