Sometimes it seems like we've been inundated with a flood of lousy polling this year. So I checked out the numbers—and it's not just a feeling. Looking at just Senate polling, there's been quite an increase in the proportion of polls from the worst kinds of pollsters this year:
Click to enlarge.
Looking at the three cycles, the good news is that we've had a large decrease in polling from the unreliable Rasmussen. No longer do they release almost half of all polls as they did in 2010. However, their polls have just been replaced by even worse polling from Republican pollsters such as We Ask America and Public Opinion Strategies, and the sometimes risible efforts of YouGov.
We can see 2012 was a good year for polling, with a greater proportion of polls from PPP, in partnership sometimes with Daily Kos, of course. Also, NYT/CBS partnered with Quinnipiac instead of YouGov. We were spoiled.
Below, the numbers, for the curious.