Unskewed Polls: Hall of Fame Edition

In my opinion, the most useful contributions to Baseball Hall of Fame voting and the attendant debate are the ballot aggregators of Twitter users @RRepoz and @leokitty. The former runs the comprehensive HOF Ballot Collecting Gizmo, while the latter maintains a Google spreadsheet with each individual ballot detailed. Together, they are the Hall of Fame equivalent of exit polling an election.

However, as those who work in politics know, every poll has a margin of error. They can even be flat wrong—remember when aides were calling John Kerry "Mr. President" after looking at the first wave of exits in 2004? In this case, these Hall of Fame polls are at one big disadvantage to the generally sound practice of political polling: they aren't representative, as scientific polls are made to be by weighting.

Through no fault of these aggregators, Hall of Fame exit polling is by definition skewed toward a self-selected pool: BBWAA members who are willing to make their ballots public. This tends to include more progressive scribes: those who value transparency, and not those who stopped covering baseball 20 years ago (these retired reporters may not even have an outlet to publish their Hall of Fame column even if they wanted to write one). In political terms, the poll over-represents certain demographics and undercounts certain other populations who still vote in high numbers.

Therefore, if you quote these aggregators' raw numbers as direct predictions of final vote totals—as many people on Twitter seem to be doing—you're going to be in for a surprise on January 8, when full results are announced. It's just as dangerous as relying on unweighted polling numbers in politics.

What we need to predict the Hall of Fame is more than a flawed poll—it's a model, of the sort used with great success by Nate Silver in the past few elections. Except ours is much simpler—all we have to do, in pollster terms, is tweak the numbers based on where past polls have historically fallen short.

You could say what we're doing here is the baseball version of UnskewedPolls.com, the ill-fated conservative alternative to FiveThirtyEight that manipulated 2012 polls and convinced many that Mitt Romney would actually win the election. Well, I prefer to think of it as the work any pollster must do to refine his or her raw data into a releasable scientific survey: weighting the numbers based on known facts and sound logic to get a representative sample.

Below is a comparison of the final exit polls for last year's Hall of Fame election and the actual results. We 're using @RRepoz's polling here, since he had a larger sample size than @leokitty—194 ballots out of an eventual 569 cast (34.1%):

You can see that the polls significantly short-changed certain players and over-hyped certain others. A similar discrepancy exists in the 2012 Hall of Fame exit polls, for which we use @leokitty's data. Her sample size that year was 114 out of 573 ballots cast (19.9%):

In 2011, @leokitty captured 122 votes out of an eventual 581 (21.0%):

And, finally, @leokitty had the biggest sample in 2010—92 out of 539 ballots (17.1%):

Four years of data should be sufficient for our purposes, especially since a clear pattern has emerged. The exit polls understate support for "old-school" candidates like Jack Morris, Lee Smith, and Don Mattingly. They overstate support for more subtle greatness—especially Tim Raines—and controversial candidates like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Each individual is over- or under-sampled by different degrees, however. A simple average of each player's "margin of error" in the past four elections yields an adjustment factor that we can apply to this year's exit polling. The chart below extrapolates each candidate's projected vote share for 2014 based on this adjustment factor and @RRepoz's current (updated as of 9pm ET on January 5) exit polls.

(Note that, unfortunately, these projections don't work on first-time candidates, because there is no vote history to calculate an adjustment factor from. In these cases, I've left their projected vote totals as they are in the polls. However, a future post here will explore ways to guesstimate adjustment factors for these players as well.)

The model projects that four candidates will be elected to the Hall this year: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, and—in a scraper—Craig Biggio. Falling short, thanks in part to his negative adjustment factor, will be Mike Piazza. Meanwhile, the top candidate likely to benefit from the old-school boost, Jack Morris, simply has too much ground to make up. He's currently polling at 60.3%, and while he is almost certain to get more than that on Wednesday, a 14.7-point bump would be an unprecedented margin of error. Falling off for another reason could be Rafael Palmeiro, who looks like he'll survive according to the raw numbers, but his adjustment puts him under 5%. While polls indicate Don Mattingly is in real danger of dropping off, precedent suggests he'll get a big boost on Election Day.

Of course, even a few days out, it's still fairly early in the voting process. @RRepoz has aggregated just 131 ballots; if history is any guide, more will soon be publicly released, which will increase the accuracy of exit polls and thus improve these projections. Stay tuned to Baseballot on Twitter to get daily updates as we count down the days to January 8.

Nate Silvering Jack Morris's Hall of Fame Chances

It's the most ludicrous time of the year—Hall of Fame voting! Every year around this time, we gather around our computer screens with our loved ones [in another room] to rehash the same tired old debate between the new and old schools of baseball thought. I don't pretend to bring any new wisdom to that crusade, but as my contribution instead I want to illuminate some patterns about how the contentious elections have worked in the past. Rather than saying who should make it into the Hall—I'm interested in trying to predict who will.

Last year, I took a look at Hall of Fame "exit polls" and, like Nate Silver's famous political model, attempted to project the 2013 vote totals. I'll be doing that again this year, but right now there aren't enough exit-poll data to run that analysis. Instead, what I'd like to do for now is look at the likeliest resolution for one of the Hall of Fame's most polarizing nominees: Jack Morris.

Jack Morris, as you probably know, is a favorite of the old-school crowd. They love his 254 wins, supposed ability to "pitch to the score," and of course his performance in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. Despite the opposition of the numbers crowd (numbers like Morris's career 3.90 ERA, higher than any Hall of Famer's), Morris is now on the cusp of induction—but time is running out. This will be Morris's 15th year on the Hall of Fame ballot, and per the rules, he will be eliminated from contention if he can't make it in this year. So our question is a simple one: will he make it?

Morris's proportion of the vote has been in steady incline since he debuted on the ballot in 2000. That year, he garnered just 22.2% of the vote (imagine that today—not too long ago most people actually agreed Jack Morris was not a Hall of Famer) and has increased to 67.7% since. That's an average annual increase of 3.5 percentage points, although there has been a lot of variation in that (he's gained as much as 13.2 points in a year and lost as many as 4.1.) A simple polynomial regression fits the data fairly well:

According to this formula, Morris will receive 75.3% of the vote this year—just enough for induction, although really that indicates that this race is a tossup.

Breaking the tie could be that, by rule, a player's 15th year on the ballot is his last. Jack Morris will not have another chance to make the Hall of Fame after 2014 (at least by conventional means). According to conventional wisdom, this will cause voters to give him extra consideration—and thus he will experience a larger-than-usual increase in his vote totals. This is referred to as the "15-year bump."

Unfortunately for Morris, though, the 15-year bump is a myth. Since 1967, when the modern Hall of Fame voting system went into effect, 35 players have made it to a 15th year on the ballot. They had a median boost of just 2.6 percentage points in their final year; several players, including Morris, regularly get boosts even larger than that in regular years. Tellingly, only one of the 35 was able to clear 75% on their last year on the ballot: Jim Rice. (However, eight more are Hall of Famers anyway thanks to the Veterans Committee. This also makes this whole conversation kind of academic, since this precedent virtually assures that Morris will get in someday.)

However, there is a lot of variance in the size of 15-year bumps. They have historically been as small as a decline of 7.3 points (poor Al Dark in 1980) or as large as Gil Hodges's boost of 14.0 points in 1983. (Morris needs a bump of 7.3 points, something that has occurred six times.) Although the pattern is unclear, there is some reason to think that the bumps are larger when a player is closer to induction. Here is a scattergram of the 35 players' 15-year bumps graphed by their shares of the total vote in the previous election (their 14th year on the ballot):

It's hardly conclusive, but the players with the biggest bumps also had the higher vote totals the year before. This makes sense: there's no need for voters to put extra juice behind the candidacies of no-hope contenders stuck in the 20s, but when a player is within striking distance of 75%, they probably recognize the stakes are higher and throw more votes his way. However, this isn't always the case; at the far right of the chart, Jim Rice got just a 4.2-point boost in 2009, though this was enough to push him over. It remains to be seen where Morris's scatterpoint will fall.

One thing the graph does imply is that, at the very least, Morris can expect not to lose support. However, on the very unusual ballot we are confronted with in 2014, that may not be assured. The presence of up to 20 Hall of Fame–worthy players means that several will be left behind thanks to the BBWAA's limit of 10 votes per ballot. Does the limit mean there will be fewer slots available on voters' ballots for Morris (and other candidates with room to grow) to hitch on?

According to the man himself (Nate Silver, not Jack Morris), the 10-man limit can hurt marginal Hall of Fame candidates. However, while Morris certainly does not enjoy universal admiration, it's not clear that he's "marginal," either. People who support Morris tend to think he's one of the most deserving players on the ballot; people who don't support him wouldn't vote for his 3.90 ERA in a million years—much less make room on their full ballots for him (many of these anti-Morris voters, because they are more empirical thinkers, also support PED users for the Hall and thus have much fuller ballots). Silver found that removing the 10-vote limit really wouldn't help Morris pick up very many votes.

Historically, the crowdedness of the ballot also hasn't really affected whether players receive a 15-year bump. As you can see below, players have received large 15-year bumps in years both when voters have had loaded ballots and when they have had room to spare. And some of the leanest years in Hall of Fame voting history produced no significant bumps:

Statistically, there is no relationship; nor is there a relationship between the size of the bump and the number of new names introduced onto the ballot that year; nor is there a relationship between the size of the bump and the number of votes first-time candidates receive. Luckily for Morris, this doesn't seem like it will hinder his chances. (My theory as to why: even though we think of this ballot as stacked, the conservative BBWAA does not. Even when voters dispense votes like candy, they're still only filling, at most, an average of seven spots on their ballot. The Hall of Fame has not yet truly bumped up against its ceiling.)

So where has this tour through Hall of Fame voting history left us? Will Jack Morris get into the Hall of Fame in 2014? The evidence, naturally, is inconclusive. Morris's personal voting history is on a trajectory to just barely get him in—though there is tons of room for error. No tiebreaker exists to make a decisive call. The prospect of his receiving a 15-year bump is dubious at best, and if he does receive one, it is unlikely to be larger than the automatic boost he's already going to get. And there is no evidence to suggest that the ballot's congestion will meaningfully eat into that boost. Like any good election, we're in for a nailbiter on January 8.

Low Turnout Brings 2014 Hope to... Democrats?

It's not a good time to be a politician; they're hated more than Brussels sprouts at the Thanksgiving table. The troubled launch of Obamacare, of course, is to blame for the latest crisis of confidence—one that has brought Democrats down to the depths of public opinion that Republicans were already wallowing in post-shutdown. As a result, many a pundit is taking an I-told-you-so attitude. Everyone else is now seeing what they saw earlier: that it is unlikely Democrats can make gains in the 2014 election.

I really don't yet know what Democrats will do in 2014, but it's also not quite right to say voters are casting equal blame across both parties. Take a look at this Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll from last week:

"Just 38 percent of those polled said they approved of Obama's job performance, with 55 percent disapproving. ... Americans are even more dubious about Congress. Just 9 percent of those polled (down from 21 percent last November) approved of its performance. Fully 84 percent disapproved."

It tells what is by now a familiar story: Obama is unpopular, but Congress is even more unpopular. That doesn't necessarily speak well for Democrats. (Here we're treating Obama popularity as a proxy for Democrats and congressional popularity as a proxy for Republicans.) But here's something very interesting about the crosstabs of the poll:

"Almost nine-in-10 of those who disapproved of Obama's performance also gave Congress a thumbs-down; 56 percent of those who disapproved of Congress also flunked Obama."

A lot of people actually disapprove of both—so maybe Obama disapproval isn't a good proxy for Republicans, and congressional disapproval isn't a good proxy for Democrats. There is a sizable bloc of "plague on both your houses" voters—which probably isn't a surprise.

But there's an equally sizable bloc on the other side that continues to believe in government (or at least half of it). Just as many people still approve of exactly one party as hate them both. And, among this group, the people who approve of Obama but disapprove of Congress (i.e., Democrats) are far more numerous. Here's the breakdown of the poll's entire sample by this matrix we've concocted:

Disapprove of both Obama and Congress: 47%
Approve of Congress, disapprove of Obama (Republicans): 8%
Approve of Obama, disapprove of Congress (Democrats): 37%
Approve of both Obama and Congress: 1% (the poor souls)

(Note that it doesn't add up to 100%; the rest weren't sure what to think of our political morass.)

This is pretty remarkable. Now, obviously, there aren't four times as many Democrats as Republicans; plenty of Republicans (i.e., Tea Partiers) are in the "plague on both your houses" group. But most Democrats aren't disillusioned at all; the 37% in the sample above almost exactly matches the 38% of nationwide voters who identified as Democrats in the exit polls of last year's election.

So what does this mean for 2014? I would posit that the 47% who are so cynical may simply not show up to vote at all. Why show up to vote in an election that you don't think will make a difference? The midterm is already a low-turnout environment anyway. If only people who believe in government, with a stake in one of the sides, show up in 2014, the electorate will look like this (removing the 47% from the sample):

Approve of Congress, disapprove of Obama (Republicans): 17%
Approve of Obama, disapprove of Congress (Democrats): 80%
Approve of both Obama and Congress: 2%

Now, obviously it won't break down that way; 80% Democrats is an impossible number. Some of the disenchanted 47% will certainly show up, and their unpredictability is what's casting the 2014 election into such uncertainty. But among voters who aren't likely to throw up their hands and forsake the whole system, Democrats dominate. That built-in advantage is, if nothing else, better than the alternative heading into 2014.

Are We Really a Center-Right Country?

Some random thoughts on a Saturday morning...

A few weeks ago, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told a dinner audience, "We're a center-right country." Bush was articulating a theme that he has pushed for several months now and that will probably be the message of his 2016 presidential campaign, if he undertakes one. (I'm skeptical.) It's a fairly uncontroversial statement, since it has been taken as conventional wisdom for some time now that the United States is indeed "center-right." But I'm not so sure.

There's some truth to it, of course. Polls show that Americans dislike higher taxes and believe the Second Amendment gives people the right to bear arms. They think the high budget deficit is a problem, and they want government spending cut back (at least in the abstract).

But there's just as much evidence in the other direction—some of it quite surprising. Most Americans believe women have the right to get an abortion. All the evidence suggests that a majority of the country now supports the right of same-sex couples to marry. And a recent poll found that 58% believe marijuana should be legalized.

How to square these inconsistencies? Well, I think it's obvious that America's not a center-right country, but rather a libertarian-leaning country. All of the general attitudes described above lean in the direction of individual liberties and rights; they're actually not inconsistent at all.

The notion that we're actually a libertarian-leaning nation also fits with common sense. The "center-right" theory stems largely from a comparison with ultra-liberal Europe. But the comparison might better be between that continent's nanny states and watchful eyes and America's more individualist spirit. That was what set Americans apart from the very beginning: an emphasis on natural-born rights and the manifest-destiny ideals of building a life for yourself with just your own two hands.

And we might be becoming even more libertarian, with the attitudes of younger voters and my Millennial generation skewing strongly in this direction. Although I hate to conclude on such a trite point, the fact that America is really a libertarian nation may be why so many people feel like the two-party system is failing the country. We may increasingly be becoming a nation that isn't best described on a traditional left-right spectrum. The parties have done a good job historically of adapting to the adjusting attitudes among the American people, and I think they will adapt again if this really is the case. But in the meantime, when you hear politicians debating over whether we are a "center-right" or "center-left" country, I think it may be fair to wonder whether they are missing the point—and thus epitomizing the current disconnect between Washington and the 50 states.

Your Guide to Election Night 2013

Even though it's an odd year, this coming Tuesday, November 5, is Election Day in many states. You are probably familiar with the bigger races—New Jersey and Virginia governor, anyone?—but there's actually a lot more going on to capture a political junkie's attention. Personally, I'll be watching the Boston mayoral race, the Colorado secession movement, and the Washington GMO ballot measure very closely.

To help guide those who haven't been following a lot of the more local campaigns but are interested in following them on election night, I've created this viewer's guide for Tuesday. Sorted by poll-closing times (all times Eastern), it's a state-by-state rundown of what's on the ballot in 2013.

7pm ET

Florida: Municipal elections, including Miami mayor, St. Petersburg mayor, and local ballot measures in Hialeah and Key West.
Georgia: Primary special elections in SD-14, HD-104, and HD-127; municipal elections, including mayor of Atlanta.
South Carolina: Municipal elections in Mt. Pleasant, Spartanburg, and Myrtle Beach.
Virginia: A well-publicized governor's election, but also close lieutenant governor and attorney general races; the entire House of Delegates is also up for grabs.

7:30pm ET

North Carolina: Municipal elections, including a bitter partisan race for Charlotte mayor.
Ohio: Municipal elections, including mayoral races in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton as well as a school-financing measure in Columbus.

8pm ET

Alabama: The Republican primary runoff in the AL-01 special election.
Connecticut: Municipal elections, including mayor of New Haven.
Maine: Five bond issues; municipal elections in Lewiston.
Maryland: Municipal elections in Annapolis, Bowie, Frederick, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Salisbury, and more.
Massachusetts: Municipal elections, including a close Boston mayoral race; a special election in the Second Hampden and Hampshire Senate District.
Michigan: Municipal elections, including Detroit mayor, an open position of questionable power right now; a special election in HD-49.
Mississippi: Special primary elections in HD-05, HD-55, and HD-110.
Missouri: Scattered local ballot measures.
New Hampshire: Municipal elections, including the race for mayor of Manchester, the state's largest city; a special election in Hillsborough County House District 35.
New Jersey: The night's second-highest-profile gubernatorial election; all 40 State Senate seats; all 80 General Assembly seats; a referendum (Question 1) to dedicate assessments on wages to employee benefits; a referendum (Question 2) on raising the minimum wage to $8.25 per hour; some municipal elections.
Pennsylvania: Municipal elections, including an open-seat mayoral race in Pittsburgh.
Rhode Island: Municipal elections in Woonsocket and Central Falls.
Tennessee: Municipal elections in Humboldt, Knoxville, and Selmer.

9pm ET

Arizona: Municipal elections, including mayorals in Prescott and Yuma.
Colorado: Amendment 66, which would raise taxes $950 million to fund education; Proposition AA, which would institute a 25% tax on recreational marijuana; a nonbinding referendum in 11 counties to secede from Colorado; various municipal elections, including fracking bans in Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins, and Lafayette.
Minnesota: Municipal elections, including an open Minneapolis mayor's race that has drawn 35 candidates.
New Mexico: Municipal elections, including in Las Cruces.
New York: Six ballot measures, including Proposal 1 (to authorize new casinos) and Proposal 6 (to increase the judicial retirement age); municipal elections, including New York City mayor; county elections, including closely watched races for county executive in Nassau and Westchester; special legislative elections in AD-02, AD-53, and AD-86.
Texas: Nine ballot questions, including Proposition 6, on water projects; various municipal elections, including the preliminary round of the Houston mayoral and a local referendum on the fate of the Astrodome; a special primary election in HD-50.
Wyoming: Local ballot initiatives in Hot Springs, Laramie, and Sheridan Counties.

10pm ET

Idaho: Municipal elections, including Nampa mayor.
Iowa: Municipal elections, including a local ballot measure in Coralville that has drawn big outside spending.
Montana: Municipal elections, including Billings mayor.
Utah: Municipal elections, including West Valley City mayor and a Jordan School District bond measure.

11pm ET

California: Municipal elections, including the San Bernardino mayor's race and a gun-control ballot measure in Sunnyvale.
Oregon: Local ballot measures, including a Multnomah County bond issue.
Washington: I-517, which would make it easier to qualify ballot measures; I-522, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified foods; five nonbinding "advisory questions"; municipal elections, including an historic race for Seattle mayor and a minimum-wage ballot measure in SeaTac; special legislative elections in SD-07, SD-08, and SD-26; county elections, including the Whatcom County Council, a priority for national environmental groups.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Graduation Day for the Emerson College Polling Society

In Tuesday's Democratic primary in MA-05, more than just State Senator Katherine Clark emerged with a win. It was also a big night for nascent pollster the Emerson College Polling Society (ECPS). The outfit was the only public pollster to dip its toe into the congressional special election, and its October 2–8 poll correctly predicted Clark's 10-point margin of victory (albeit over the wrong runner-up). The firm has also polled the closely contested Virginia governor's race and June's Massachusetts Senate special.

But while these and other of ECPS's polls have been remarked and reported on, there has also been a fair amount of skepticism toward the pollster in the political sphere. This famously insular community was never going to simply welcome a newcomer like ECPS with open arms, of course; in a town like DC, you get credibility only by earning it. And rightfully so—it's good for people to rigorously question and test unknown commodities, especially when they're playing with live ammo to the degree that pollsters are.

But with ECPS, I question what people are questioning. The doubt that seems to surround ECPS in political circles is not a natural, healthy skepticism, but rather a dismaying bias against it for its unique status as a student organization. I've had debates with other political analysts about ECPS in which my peers were wary of believing its polls simply because they were conducted by students. Then, in the wake of the MA-05 primary, I read this well-meaning yet offensive post on the blog Blue Mass Group:

"This outfit, which appears to be a student-run organization at Emerson College, seems to be the only independent organization to have polled the race (more on that in a sec). I didn’t post on the poll they released last Friday because it’s hard to tell if they’re just a student club having fun, or if they are running real polls. … I still wish I knew more about how they’re set up … like, are any grown-ups involved with them? :)"

To be clear: I don't believe we should accept every new outlet that walks up and calls itself a pollster. But a student group is every bit as capable of producing high-quality, scientifically rigorous work as a professional firm, and it's insulting to say otherwise. ECPS has proven as much with the accuracy of their polls to date, exactly nailing the final margin of the Markey/Gomez Senate election as well as the this week's congressional primary. In the case of MA-05, ECPS especially impressed because of how notoriously difficult it is to poll special House elections (they deserve credit for being the only public pollster to even try).

Just as relevantly, their conduction by students does not imply a sloppier or less precise methodology to ECPS's polls. Even in this day and age, there remains a notion that party-hardy college students can't take things seriously or be responsible members of society. But like the ubiquitous columns that bemoan the laziness and entitlement of the Millennial generation, anyone trafficking in false and ignorant assumptions about students' capabilities is guaranteed to have no understanding or first-hand knowledge of the subject. This is not just a bunch of students playing around with phones and numbers. Just the opposite. Students don't often create polling societies, or stick their necks out into the adult world like this, every day. I can tell you from experience that the students who undertake something like the ECPS do so because they are uncommonly serious about learning—and about their craft. In fact, student organizations founded to compete with the big boys have a thirst to be taken seriously that is unmatched by anyone else.

A slightly more valid complaint would be that the people running ECPS don't even have college degrees—even though the same is true of countless accomplished individuals. But it is also an arbitrary line to draw, since a college graduate doesn't go from uneducated to educated the minute he receives his diploma. In fact, ECPS workers are totally immersed in what is probably the best possible influence on a data cruncher: academia. The pollsters of ECPS may not have that degree in hand yet, but they have more immediacy to the science of polling because they are taking classes and learning about it in the moment. (In fact, in my experience, student organizations are often book-smarter and more rigorous in their standards than professional firms because of this.) These classes, of course, are taught by universally renowned and credentialed experts in the fields of polling, statistics, political science, and more. Any gaps students have in their still-developing knowledge (important caveat: even as a 50-year-old, if your knowledge has stopped developing, you're doing it wrong) are more than made up for by the fact that those gaps can be filled by these unimpeachable authorities. Every student group I've ever heard of has had a faculty adviser, and a quick Google search reveals ECPS is no different. This is not "just a student club having fun." It's a responsible collection of students and their mentors who feel their skills are ready to be tested.

Not every student group should be taken seriously, just like not every company run by "adults" should be taken seriously. But college students founded, and in many cases still run, many businesses that are widely accepted and trusted. Let's Go, the internationally known travel guide on six continents, has been since its founding 53 years ago an entirely student-run organization—one I am proud to have written, edited, and overseen for. The social-media analytics firm Syndio Social started as a student group at Northwestern but now is an industry leader with huge corporate clients like Procter and Gamble. The Statler Hotel, the only luxury hotel in Ithaca, NY, is run by students at Cornell's hospitality school. Countless radio stations, including several that dominate their otherwise-underserved market, are run by students. And now, the Emerson College Polling Society simply seeks to join in the tradition of serious student contributions to the "adult" business world.

At 18, 20, even 22 years old, college students not only have "grown-ups involved with them"; they are grown-ups. Election law treats them this way; the criminal-justice system treats them this way; we should treat them that way. ECPS should be held to the same standards and subjected to the same scrutiny as any other pollster.

I'm no expert on polling, but to me ECPS passes this test. It has a detailed website, including a methodology page disclosing its vendors and laying out a polling procedure that, as far as I know, is accepted and standard in the industry. It releases the full scripts, raw counts, and crosstabs of its polls. If someone with more knowledge of polling wants or needs to see more to be convinced, cool—ask ECPS to show you more and I'm sure they'd oblige. But if what ECPS currently provides isn't enough, that further inquiry should be the default reaction—not a lazy dismissal of its chances as a serious firm without giving it a chance. If a new professional polling company emerged with the same level of public disclosure as ECPS, it would probably get the benefit of the doubt—and if not, it would be administered a proper and fair test to prove its worth. The industry's perception of ECPS should be based off the same.

Tracking the Polls: Boston Mayor

Primary day in the Boston mayoral election is next Tuesday, September 24, and the field is—to put it mildly—fractured. No fewer than 12 candidates are seeking the rarely available job, and Bostonians are splitting their support almost evenly. This has made polling the race extremely difficult, with few candidates even breaking into double digits and the frontrunner always within the margin of error. Still, the polling is useful to look at in aggregate—so aggregate the polls this post shall, since I don't believe there's a website that currently provides all the race's surveys at a glance. The following list of public polls for Boston mayor (note: these are the "with-leaners" versions of the polls) will be updated through Tuesday:

Poll	Dates	Sample	MoE	Arroyo	Barros	Clemons	Conley	Connolly	Consalvo	Golar Richie	Ross	Walczak	Walsh	Wyatt	Yancey
Suffolk/Herald	7/10–7/15	600	4%	4%	1%	1%	9%	12%	8%	5%	5%	2%	11%	1%	3%
Sage Systems	8/21–8/22	821	2.7%	6%	3%	N/A	9%	12%	7%	7%	6%	3%	11%	N/A	N/A
UNH/Globe	9/5–9/12	411	4.8%	6%	6%	2%	10%	15%	6%	10%	5%	4%	10%	0%	3%
MassINC/WBUR	9/14–9/16	487	4.4%	8%	3%	0%	8%	15%	5%	10%	6%	4%	12%	0%	1%
Suffolk/Herald	9/12–9/17	600	4%	6%	3%	1%	12%	16%	8%	10%	5%	6%	12%	0%	1%

For not a lot of data, this paints a reasonably clear picture of the race. City Councilor John Connolly is almost certainly in the best position, coming in first in all five polls. The battle for the second runoff slot behind him is tight, though; State Representative Marty Walsh and Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley are strong contenders, while Charlotte Golar Richie (the race's only woman) has clear momentum. Of course, the big picture remains that the results are unpredictable and that no candidate is more than a couple points out. Although the aforementioned four have to be considered the race's "frontrunners" right now (such as they are), four other candidates (Felix Arroyo, John Barros, Rob Consalvo, and Mike Ross) have been within the margin of error for the second slot in at least one poll. It should be a wild ride leading up to Tuesday.