Much maligned US opinion polls come up trumps
Politicians fear them, voters mistrust them, but many US opinion polls were impressively accurate in predicting Barack Obama's landslide defeat of John McCain.
Several polling organisations were as giddy with success as Obama fans.
"We were dead on centre. We don't want to be obnoxious about it, but we had a really good year," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Obama defeated McCain by 52 to 46 percent in the national vote.
While few polls predicted exactly those numbers, the six point spread was matched, or almost matched in seven of 15 pre-election surveys listed on the realclearpolitics.com website.
"If you followed all the polls and didn't cherry pick one or two, then that gave a very good sense of what to expect on election night," said Scott Rasmussen, of rasmussenreports.com.
"Our national tracking poll of 52-46 was exactly right ... It was a much better night than people had feared," he said.
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