About: Pollstradamus

The Forecast

The centerpiece of this website is of course the electoral college forecast. But where does the underlying data come from to make this forecast?

A blend of voter registration data, recent election results, and polling from the state and national levels. Registration data, while always changing, will largely stay the same during a single election forecast's lifetime, as changes there tend to be gradual. The primary data point that fluctuates are the state and national polling, which I’ll provide updates for daily as the polls are released.

There are certain criteria for a poll to be included. The foremost of which is that the poll must have publicly available crosstab data. Thankfully, very few polls fail to disclose this information, and the few that do not diclose come from firms with a strong partisan bent.

On that point, I will include polling from firms that are partisan aligned (ex: Cygnal (R), Public Policy Polling (D)) but will not include internal campaign polls, which tend to be released for political purposes and often do not disclose crosstab information anyway.