Weighting pollsters by their historical accuracy (as fivethirtyeight.com does) is questionable because past success may be partly random luck and because pollsters who erred likely changed their methodology afterward, so historical outcomes don't reliably predict future accuracy—analogous to picking mutual funds by past manager returns.

causalpending

Speaker

Doug Rivers

Evidence Quote

presumably the losers have learned something and it probably changed their methodology so you wouldn't want to wait them based on their historic outcomes

Source

Doug Rivers on polling 7/21/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:54 AM

My Notes

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