Opinion: Pollsters share the winner’s circle with Hillary Clinton

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Let’s give credit where credit is due -- in this case, to the pollsters (many of them, at least).

It’s been a rough season for those who get paid to gauge public opinion, epitomized by the raft of miscalls in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.

Then there was the embarrassing Reuters/CSpan/Zogby poll on the eve of Super Tuesday -- the survey reported Barack Obama up by 13 percentage points in California; he ended up losing the day’s major prize to Hillary Clinton by about 10 points.

Since then, the polls accurately foretold the string of victories Obama put together, but usually underestimated the margin by which he would triumph.

Perhaps the pollsters have finally readjusted their interview models to take into account the surges in turnout that have marked most of the Democratic contests. Regardless, on Tuesday, in both Ohio and Texas, the closing polls (for the most part) ...

got it right.

In Ohio, virtually every survey caught a Clinton surge, and quite a few were almost exactly on the mark in presaging her roughly 10-point victory.

In Texas -- a much closer race -- the scorecard for the pollsters understandably was more mixed. But several caught the uptick in Clinton’s support as the balloting neared.

Bouncing back from its California debacle, the Reuters/CSpan/Zogby poll, supervised by John Zogby, posted the best final numbers, finding Clinton leading by 3 points. With most of the Texas vote counted, her margin is 3.5 points.

Still, the Zogby folks can’t indulge in too much self-congratulation. They ended up with egg on their face in Ohio, with a final poll that called it a tie in that state.

-- Don Frederick