Democratic pollster/blogger Mark Blumenthal, writing today in politicalwire.com, calculated which polling firms had the most accurate record in calling the two governor’s races. The clear winner was SurveyUSA, which uses automated polling. SurveyUSA nailed the margin in Virginia (18 points) and tied Rasmussen (another automated pollster) for coming closest to calling Christie’s four-point victory in New Jersey. Both firms had Christie winning by three points. I miss having SurveyUSA in Texas. They occasionally had some wide swings in approval ratings from one month to the next, but they provided information that was not available anywhere else. Hard times in the media business caused the TV stations that used the firm to drop them, alas. Some of the most respected names in the business flubbed the Virginia race: Research 2000, the Washington Post, and Mason Dixon all had McDonnell winning, but they missed by the margin of victory by 6 to 8 points.