RCP poll average in the PollyVote
The RealClearPolitics (RCP) poll average stands out as a longstanding and widely recognized polling aggregator, being one of the few that was operational in 2004 when PollyVote was founded. Unlike some other aggregators, the RCP average refrains from weighting polls by sample size or recency and does not adjust for house effects, maintaining a straightforward presentation of publicly available opinion polls. This approach contributes to a direct and unfiltered representation of collective public sentiment in the RCP average.
PollyVote converts the RCP poll average for Biden and Trump into two-party shares before incorporating them into its poll component.
Additionally, PollyVote leverages historical discrepancies in the RCP and final vote shares to compute 80% empirical confidence intervals surrounding the projected vote shares. These intervals not only provide a measure of certainty but also enable the estimation of probabilities for each candidate to secure the popular vote.