Usually I don't devote a lot of attention to a single pollster. That's almost as bad news organizations calling the New Hampshire Senate race a toss-up because one poll showed Scott Brown within the margin of error of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (well, actually two polls--and I was quite ashamed of my native Dartmouth College for reporting the race as such). Or the pundits who suggested that Oregon's Senate race was a toss-up because Monica Wehby led Sen. Jeff Merkley in one poll conducted by a Republican firm. Or the--you get the idea. But as I've said before, I'm paying a lot of attention to this YouGov survey because it's just so ambitious, and just crazy enough to work. Maybe.
To reiterate, I flagged the YouGov survey for a closer look because 1) it was longitudinal, meaning that it would try to track the same panelists in the months leading up to the election, and 2) it was an attempt to poll every race in every state. Even in a state like Utah, where neither Gov. Gary Herbert nor Senators Orrin Hatch or Mike Lee are up for re-election, YouGov assembled a panel of 1087 voters just to ask them the generic House ballot question. I found the sheer scope and ambition of the survey pretty cool.
Unfortunately, as I also wrote, it also sorta fell flat. Too many things--suspicious results, distorted weights, a distinct lack of Asians--seemed off for me to consider any of the results in our average. So I didn't, but I did decide to wait for the next iteration of the poll to come out before passing judgment on YouGov as a whole.
