BuffaloSkinners

venezuelablog:

By: Iñaki Sagarzazu

(Léelo en español en YV Polis)

There is a little more than a month left to go before the next presidential election in Venezuela and the polls are just as murky as they were in July. The last month has seen a new batch of polling results that range from a 20-point lead for President Hugo Chávez to a 2-point lead for the challenger, Miranda Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski. Given this variability, the exercise we did in this blog last month (see the previous post here, léelo en español aquí) continues to be of use; I will take those same measures of correction and apply them to the latest poll available for each firm.

Recapitulating

First, let’s briefly review the previous post. In it I argued that polling houses typically tend to err in one direction, which allows us to determine a measure of bias with which we can correct current predictions. Second, I highlighted two scenarios from the previous electoral contests: 1) a scenario where the polls were had the opposition ahead, but the government won (like in 2004 and 2009); and 2) a scenario where the government was thought to be ahead but where the opposition ended up winning or coming very close to doing so (like in 2007 and 2010). These two scenarios served as the basis for two measures of “correction” for current polls. A third measure of correction was based on the average of all errors for the previous elections. These correction terms can be seen in the table below.

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