Let's play a game, where does polling say the race stands in NH and National

[Godhumor]

No commentary, but I'm just curious to see how people interpret polling, so I'm going with spreads only, no identifiers for which poll outfit conducted each survey.

NH first, all polls since 2/2. Spreads all represent Bernie's lead:

+20
+31
+16
+15
+15
+9

National, all polls since 1/18 (Cut off point for RCP's current aggregate). Spreads all represent Hillary's lead:
+12
+19
+14
+12
+21
+2

In both cases, it would be very easy to choose one poll, on either end of the spectrum (+9 in NH, he is collapsing! +31 in NH he is unstoppable!) for both NH and National and set a narrative just from that. But, in my mind, it is a lot easier to see where races stand by looking at more than just the ones that make us feel the best.

So, I look at this and think that Bernie is probably up by 15 or so in NH right now and Clinton is probably up around 13 or so nationally, right now. And I think that, because when human brains look at like numbers it automatically discounts the outer most edges--we actually subconsciously adjust for outliers.

I bet that my back of the envelope +15 and +13 is a lot closer to truth today than +31/+9 or +21/+2.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. You actually want to look at the same poll over time, or averages of polls over time

weighted averages of polls - with "better" polls having more "weight" are perhaps the best way to get a good sense of what is going on.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_presidential_primary-3351.html

They do this for you.

[MrChuck]

2. I don't disagree in the least.

I'll bet that some people would much rather see NO POLLS showing a 30 point swing though, ya know what I mean?