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More maps for your analyzing pleasure * Updated x1 *

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Illinois

Our pal Glenn Hodas has generated some new maps for us. You can also see larger versions on his website. Click for the big pics.

The first has results from the governor’s race in Chicago. Seriously blue, but with some Green influence…

Here’s the guv’s race in suburban Cook County…

The Cook County Board President’s race in Chicago…

And, finally, the Cook County Board President’s race in suburban Cook…

*** UPDATE *** SurveyUSA has a chart on its website comparing poll results for all recent polls to actual vote totals. Here are the Illinois results. If it’s too wide for your screen, just head to the above link and scroll down.

And the Wall Street Journal had an analysis today.

I looked at five pollsters that were among the most prolific: Rasmussen, SurveyUSA, Zogby (which releases separate telephone and online polls) and Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon. For all but the latter, I used the numbers posted on the organizations’ own Web sites. For Mason-Dixon, which keeps some of its poll data behind a subscriber wall, I used Pollster.com to find polls from the two weeks before the election. I checked the results against vote counts as of this Tuesday […]

There were some interesting trends: Phone polls tended to be better than online surveys, and companies that used recorded voices rather than live humans in their surveys were standouts. Nearly everyone had some big misses, though, such as predicting that races would be too close to call when in fact they were won by healthy margins. Also, I found that being loyal to a particular polling outfit may not be wise. Taking an average of the five most recent polls for a given state, regardless of the author — a measure compiled by Pollster.com — yielded a higher accuracy rate than most individual pollsters.

On to the results: In the Senate races, the average error on the margin of victory was tightly bunched for all the phone polls. Rasmussen (25 races) and Mason-Dixon (15) each were off by an average of fewer than four points on the margin. Zogby’s phone polls (10) and SurveyUSA (18) each missed by slightly more than four points. Just four of the 68 phone polls missed by 10 points or more, with the widest miss at 18 points.

But the performance of Zogby Interactive, the unit that conducts surveys online, demonstrates the dubious value of judging polls only by whether they pick winners correctly. As Zogby noted in a press release, its online polls identified 18 of 19 Senate winners correctly. But its predictions missed by an average of 8.6 percentage points in those polls — at least twice the average miss of four other polling operations I examined. Zogby predicted a nine-point win for Democrat Herb Kohl in Wisconsin; he won by 37 points. Democrat Maria Cantwell was expected to win by four points in Washington; she won by 17. (Zogby cooperated with WSJ.com on an online polling project that tracked some Senate and gubernatorial races.)

The picture was similar in the gubernatorial races (where Zogby polled only online, not by phone). Mason-Dixon’s average error was under 3.4 points in 14 races. Rasmussen missed by an average of 3.8 points in 30 races; SurveyUSA was off by 4.4 points, on average, in 18 races. But Zogby’s online poll missed by an average of 8.3 points, erring on six races by more than 15 points.

I never posted about any of Zogby Interactive’s results, and now you see why.

The point about taking the average of the five most recent polls is a good one and shows why some blogs can have much better analysis than traditional news outlets, which tend to be completely and exclusively wedded to their own company’s polling results.

[Emphasis added. Hat tip: Kos]

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 12:17 pm

Comments

Oak Park going to Peraica shows the Claypool voters.

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 12:26 pm
So why is Chicago bluer than midnight? Republicans in general aren’t making any efforts whatsoever to make inroads up there? I guess Chicago is really not well educated.

Comment by Crimefighter Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 12:49 pm
So Blago’s support in concentrated among blacks and Hispanics. And (mostly white) city workers didn’t support Stroger. There ya go.

Comment by DeepFriedOnAStick Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 12:53 pm
Looks like Mell pulled out the stops for the gov.

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 12:56 pm
Evanston went well into the double digits for Whitney??! Oh my God.

My university is surrounded by idealistic hippies (laugh).

That’s interesting. I hope someone from the press does some serious analysis about the Whitney vote, because it is clustered in certain areas.

Are these towns riddled with people happy about his past socialist leanings, or just inclined to throw up a big middle finger to both mainstream parties? Gotta wonder.

Comment by Angie Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 1:12 pm
Angie, probably the “big middle finger” option.

Comment by DeepFriedOnAStick Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 1:19 pm
Well, how many people move to the city for a better life/schools v the suburbs? The GOP cannot compete in the city. Then, Madigan and the dems focus money from their non-competetive races in the burbs and win.

Comment by Wumpus Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 1:37 pm
I don’t see how you can avoid the racial politics question when you look at the county board prez race. In general, white Dems voted for Peraica, and black Dems voted Stroger.

Comment by Niles Township Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 2:12 pm
DeepFried wrote, “Angie, probably the ‘big middle finger’ option.”

Oh good! I’m really lovin’ my university town now!

ROFL

Seriously. The GOP just resurrected Trent Lott. My middle finger is flying high right about now, too.

Comment by Angie Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 3:27 pm
The fact that averaging all the polls gives more accurate results is not surprising. Zogby is off by more than others but predicts who will win better if I am reading your comments accuately. Well, I am sure the margin is of huge interest to those making spending decisions in a campaign but, as an average person interested in politics, who will win is of much greater importance than by how much.

Comment by Way Northsider Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 4:25 pm
Ashur, your comment was deleted. Try to remember that I can see your IP address.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 5:15 pm
I need to move to Barrington.

Comment by HRH Weezer Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 6:14 pm
Angie, perhaps you shoulld travel west of the train tracks to see how wonderful Evanston is. It gives the phrase “the other side of the tracks” real meaning.

Comment by Wumpus Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 7:17 pm
I chose the Evanston school because I didn’t have the time to go relearn everything I forgot since high school (and then submit recent SAT scores), and then try to transfer in at University of Chicago, but I’m realizing that you’re more likely to get mugged when admiring the view of the lake from down in Hyde Park.

But yes, I know there are good parts and not-so-good parts of Evanston. I’ll stick to my campus for the most part. It truly is a world class institution as far as academics, I’m finding (even if they voted for Rod). lol

Comment by Angie Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 8:55 pm
Oh, get this. NU tried to get Rod and Judy for a debate of some sort, and Topinka apparently responded but Rod did not. I read it in the more conservative-leaning student paper, The Chronicle.

Yeah, both candidates are NU alums (undergrad), but Rod apparently dissed everyone. Now, isn’t THAT interesting to note?

Shame on him.

Comment by Angie (post-script) Thursday, Nov 16, 06 @ 8:57 pm
Look at the 13th, 19th and 23rd wards, then compare them with the 6th, 7h 8th, 9th, 17th, 21st and 34th wards. How can you possibly say that whites voted for Peraica? In some cases, a bit more than half did. In high-majority black wards, nearly everyone voted on race. Doesn’t this disturb anyone?

Comment by Snidely Whiplash Friday, Nov 17, 06 @ 9:50 am
I am so sick of the whole race-baiting thing. Look, if someone with the brains of Dr. Rice, Colin Powell, and folks of that caliber were running for some of these offices, white people would easily vote for them if they ran against someone like–I don’t know–someone wimpy, silly and irrelevant, like Rick Lazio, who Hillary Clinton easily beat in New York.

People choose who they think is the best candidate sometimes (I know that’s shocking to the race-baiting crowd, but it is true).

However, watching the drunken goons do the storming of the Bastille thing, I’m sorry I voted for the guy, now.

Comment by Angie Friday, Nov 17, 06 @ 5:48 pm