Poll Recap: What Were The Most Accurate Surveys?

We all heard the complaints about the pre-election polling. Turns out some polls — including one right here in Connecticut — were pretty accurate. None of the 28 polls here were found to have a significant partisan bias.

Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at Fordham University, writes:

For all the derision directed toward pre-election polling, the final poll estimates were not
far off from the actual nationwide voteshares for the two candidates. On average, preelection
polls from 28 public polling organizations projected a Democratic advantage of
1.07 percentage points on Election Day, which is only about 1.13 percentage points away
from the current estimate of a 2.2-point Obama margin in the national popular vote
(Obama 50.3% versus Romney 48.1%).

The following list ranks the 28 organizations by the predictive accuracy of their final,
national pre-election estimates (as reported on pollster.com):

1. Ipsos/Reuters
2. YouGov
3. PPP (D)
3. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
4. Angus-Reid
5. ABC/WP
6. Pew Research
6. Hartford Courant/UConn
7. Purple Strategies
8. NBC/WSJ
8. CBS/NYT
8. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Democracy Corps (D)
12. CNN/ORC
12. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
12. Politico/GWU/Battleground
12. FOX News
12. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
12. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
12. American Research Group
12. Gravis Marketing
13. National Journal
14. Rasmussen
14. Gallup
15. NPR
16. AP/GfK