SoonerPoll rated best pollster in Oklahoma; Top 10 percent best pollsters in America

When we started polling more than ten years ago, there was no one talking about an independent evaluation of pollsters and their performance. In fact, we began evaluating our own performance with that of other pollsters who polled in the same campaigns back in 2004, using some metrics that dated back to President Truman's reelection.

Then Nate Silver came along. Just before the 2014 general election, his FiveThirtyEight blog produced an in-depth evaluation of the performance of over 330 pollsters all over the nation, and SoonerPoll was rated the best pollster among all other pollsters based in the state of Oklahoma.  At 30th overall, SoonerPoll was also in the top ten percent of the best pollsters in the nation.

FiveThirtyEight conducted a more limited evaluation in 2008, 2010 and then again in 2012. What we like in these evaluations is that SoonerPoll.com improved over the course of those elections, something we are very proud of.

Nate Silver and his team also measured the partisan bias of each pollster and, interestingly, SoonerPoll had a Democrat bias to its results, meaning we favored Democrats more than Republicans in our final results, which is common for pollsters in red states. Occasionally, we're accused of favoring Republicans, but the facts speak otherwise.

In coming elections, we may not always be the best pollster in the state, but what our readers and followers can always count on is our dedication to our craft and a continual pursuit of producing the best polling in the state of Oklahoma.

Back to work.