When we cover public opinion, we commonly look at pollsters and polling organizations like the Gallup Poll. Now, based on the attention people like Nate Silver received in this election, we will also be looking at polling aggregators. These are people that take the data received by various polling firms and average them out using algorithms they develop that compensate for anything in the specific polls they find problematic.
Here is C-Net's appraisal of Nate Silver's performance.
One concern expressed by commentators is that all this attention to aggregators may detract from the importance of polling itself. If there are no polls, then there are no aggregators. Might this attention to aggregators minimize that given to polls?
