The votes are in!

In a previous post I reported on a comparison done by the folks at FiveThirtyEight.com showing the projected margin of victory for Obama just prior to the election by whether the polling included cell phones. The table below compares the final poll averages with the actual outcome. (“RCP Average refers to the average of all polls tracked by RealClearPolitics.com.

The most striking thing to me is how close the averages are if we think in terms of margin of error. And while the Obama projection for the cell phone group is closer to the final result the differences are so small that it’s probably unwise to make much of them. The McCain numbers show a greater spread, but that seems to be due to more undecideds among the cell phone group.

Looking at individual poll results in the table below it seems to me to be hard to argue that the polls calling cell phones (highlighted in yellow in the table) performed better or worse than those that did not, at least in terms of projecting the Obama vote.

Of course, these are all “likely voters” which means that adjustments made by these companies vary dramatically. And the cynic in me is quick to point out that these election polls have a tendency to converge into a very narrow range just before the election. Imagine that! All in all, though, I don’t see a convincing argument in these data either for including cell phones or continuing to ignore them.