“Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.”
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful, “I’d rather see that done on paper,” he said.
I’m simply not sure how anyone can pretend Rasmussen is anything other than a PR wing of the GOP:
Well, now we have results. And here is the evidence:
1. RASMUSSEN IS BIASED: Rasmussen polled over 75 races from the middle of October until Election Day. Let’s narrow that down to their most recent polls in each race (since, after all, they polled some races multiple times). So, looking at unique races, we get down to 57 contests. The House of Ras overestimated the margins in the race to the advantage of the GOP in 46 out of those 57 contests (81%). In an ideal world, of course, a pollster would get their numbers wrong pretty evenly. For example, with our pollster (PPP), their numbers wound up overstating the Democratic performance 17 out of 32 times during the same time period, and the GOP 14 out of 32 times (they hit IL-Sen right down to the tenth of a point). It cannot be attributed to mere coincidence that Rasmussen’s polling overstated Republican performance over three-fourths of the time.
2. RASMUSSEN IS NOT TERRIBLY ACCURATE: While PPP’s polling had a few misses (as all pollsters will), they were largely confined to the impossible-to-predict Alaska Senate race and a couple of House races. In a tribute to their accuracy, 17 of the 32 polls PPP has conducted since mid-October led to them coming within 3% of the final margin (53%). How did Rasmussen do on that score? Twenty-one out of 57 polls (36.8%) met that same standard. They also get the reward for dropping the biggest bomb of a poll this cycle. On October 20th, they reported to a shocked America that the GOP wave had even reached the impenetrable longtime Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye. The House of Ras had the Hawaii Senate race as a 13-point race, with the man that has represented Hawaii since statehood up only 53-40. On Election Day, of course, Inouye won by…53 points (75-22).
3. RASMUSSEN IS NOT TERRIBLY BOLD: Maybe the biggest curiosity for me in this election cycle is how timid they were at the close. Only three polls in the last day. Only 11 in the last three days. To place that number in context, place it in comparison to PPP. PPP hit fewer polls over the final three weeks (57 to 32), but hit twice as many polls as the House of Ras in the final two days. Unlike Rasmussen, who reserved the right to hide behind the “late breaking dynamics” excuse if they chose, PPP put its reputation on the line by calling their shot at the last possible second. Remember, of course, that Rasmussen did the same thing during the primaries. Most notably, they also did it during the Massachusetts Senate race, when they refused to poll the race in the last week, but inexplicably ran instead a national poll about who the country wanted to see win the race.
That is impressively bad.
WereBear
I guess Rasmussen polling has gone over to the “damn lies” camp.
BGinCHI
We need to call out polling that is push-polling disguised as “legitimate polling” (or whatever it’s called).
Rasmussen is to polling as Fox News is to news.
Its intent is to shape, not measure.
General Stuck
Hell, for three years when Bush’s polling approval number was set in concrete at 28 percent by about every polling outfit on the planet, Rasmussen had him in the mid 40’s.
I seriously wonder if dems are going to have a chance to win elections without a bonafide new cable news station to match Fox news, and their own pollsters to match up with Rasmussen. The wingnuts are even setting up satellite stations like Politico. We need our own propaganda institutions, or a BBC for America, to have a chance of beating the goopers.
The problem is, dems are the party of the poor.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI:
This.
And I think both have a sell-by date coming up fairly soon — Raz probably first. It’s a lot harder to sell this stuff when you have this kind of rapid public humiliation on tap.
I’m still beating my drum: the next few months for me are about thinking hard how to leverage what we have — technology and skillz — to defeat what they have: money and entrenched (and hence somewhat static) interests to defend.
Steve
Every mention of Rasmussen in future cycles needs to be met with “this is the outfit whose likely voter screen was off by 40 points in the Hawaii Senate race.” Every single one.
themann1086
Anyone else happy with PPP? They get slammed by the media as a biased pollster, since they work for the GOS, and they did exhibit a slight Dem lean, but they might have been the best national pollster this cycle. Kudos to them!
joe from Lowell
Rassmussen is usually better. They usually put out B.S. polling throughout the election, and then suddenly “discover” a huge movement towards the Democrats that nobody else is finding, and end up putting out very good final results.
Not this time, though.
MattR
@themann1086: A PPP tweet from 10/28
(EDIT: But no clue how their numbers turned out compared to the actual results. I am willing to accept the possibliity that Nate was wrong)
Ash Can
I figured for a while that Rasmussen was skewed in favor of the GOP, but it’s good to have it documented and quantified like this.
Edward G. Talbot
@tom levenson
Let’s not assume anything bad will happen to Ras. Who do you think is paying for their polls? Any reason to believe they didn’t get their money’s worth?
I didn’t think so.
GregB
Scott Rasmussen is an anagram for GOP poll fluffer.
Honest to God.
matoko_chan
pleeez……add somemore unflattering definitions?? vote it up?
urban dictionary
Rasmussen statistics
kth
Scott Rasmussen was on the National Review cruise. There simply isn’t a legitimate or innocuous explanation for that.