Rasmussen Polling Methodology Leaves A Lot To Be Desired

By Nathaniel Downes/Addicting Info

If you watch FOX News, you might think that Rasmussen Reports and FOX were the only groups performing polling this election season. FOX itself is rather biased, but Rasmussen has another issue: it does not actually perform its own polling. The dirty little secret behind Rasmussen is that it relies upon another firm, Pulse Opinion Research, for handling its real field-work (i.e., calling up people and running through the questions).

Doing a quick bit of research, one discovers that Pulse Opinion Research is a pay-to-poll agency which engages in automated polling. It calls up a land line, and whomever answers the phone can give the answers. There is no confirmation of age, eligibility, or even if there is a person on the other end. It is all a machine, with all of the personality of “… if you know your party’s extension …

To reach those who have abandoned land lines for mobile phones, Rasmussen also engages in online polling. They claim that they use a demographically-diverse panel, but that is not considered a reliable metric due to the potentially insecure nature of online interactive polls (making sure users only answer each question once) and the anonymous nature of Internet users (making sure the data provided is only provided by the desired target groups in certain geographical areas).

Being a pay-to-poll agency, Pulse Opinion Research has been tapped by the Libertarian party to create their own polls, with Gary Johnson’s name replacing Mitt Romney’s. The results were as expected: it mirrored the Rasmussen polls taken at the same time.

Rasmussen has outsourced its polling to outside groups since 2003, which reflects how its polling is becoming less and less accurate. Its polling methodology is also mired in a reliance upon land line telephones, which are now becoming more the exception than the rule. Its method to compensate — online polling — is easily manipulated. In the end, we must no longer consider Rasmussen a polling agency, but just another right-wing propaganda machine.

Rasmussen Reports – Methodology

NYT calls out Rasmussen for conservative bias in Wisconsin poll

By Sahil Kapur

The New York Times accused Rasmussen Reports of lacing a recent survey on the Wisconsin protests with conservative bias, elevating longstanding critiques about the polling firm's credibility.

The survey, released Monday, asked four questions about the Wisconsin clash over Republican Gov. Scott Walker's budget plan, which would strip the collective bargaining rights of public employees and force them to pay more for benefits. It found that 48 percent of "likely voters" agreed with Walker, while 38 percent supported his opponents.

Nate Silver of the Times' FiveThirtyEight blog is a trusted polling expert who came to fame after correctly predicting the outcomes of 49 of 50 states in the 2008 election. In a Monday evening posting, he took issue with the manner in which several of Rasmussen's questions were asked, decreeing that they were designed to engender a pro-Walker bias.

Two of the questions, Silver wrote, misrepresented the nature of the opposition in a "blatant" attempt to diminish sympathy for them before asking the respondent whose side they were on. The penultimate question was "a talking point posed as a question," he declared.

The questions were about whether the respondent thinks public or private sector employees make more money, and whether "teachers, firemen and policemen" should be allowed to go on strike -- which is illegal in most places for uniformed services.

"Because of the problems with question design, my advice would be simply to disregard the Rasmussen Reports poll, and to view their work with extreme skepticism going forward," Silver concluded.

Rasmussen, fending off years of criticisms of harboring a Republican-leaning bias, is taken very seriously by the mainstream press. Its founder and president, Scott Rasmussen, has openly supported conservative causes and is a former writer for the conspiracy-minded website World Net Daily.

It released hundreds of surveys in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections, many of which made prominent news in major outlets. The Times reported that Rasmussen "overestimated the standing of Republican candidates by roughly 4 percentage points on average."

"Rasmussen should probably just drop the pretense that they are non-partisan," Silver wrote Monday on Twitter.

M.C.L comment: I already knew Rasmussen was a biased piece of crap the only time I take any of their polls seriously is when they show a Democrat doing well in something..

Nearly half of Palin backers may flee GOP if she isn’t nominated

By Daniel Tencer

A new poll from Rasmussen released Monday reported that Sarah Palin's divisiveness as a candidate may pose a serious electoral problem for the Republicans in 2012.

According to the poll, nearly half of likely GOP voters who support Palin said they would switch to a third party candidate if the former Alaska governor and current Fox News personality didn't secure the presidential nomination in 2012. Fully 46 percent of Palin backers said they were likely to vote third party if Palin lost, with 22 percent saying it's "very likely."

This devotion among Palin fans is especially problematic for the GOP because, as an earlier Rasmussen poll showed, Palin is the GOP front-runner with the largest opposition among Republican voters. Thirty-three percent of likely GOP voters said Palin was the candidate they least want to see win the presidential nomination.

Other candidates' support bases aren't as quick to abandon the party should their candidate not win. Thirty-five percent of Mike Huckabee backers said they would consider a third party if the former Arkansas governor lost, while 31 percent of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's supporters said the same.

But Palin voters abandoning the GOP likely won't be much help to the Democrats, who stand to gain little from disillusioned Republican voters. Rasmussen reported that 90 percent of likely GOP voters said they were unlikely to vote for President Barack Obama, under any circumstance.

Rasmussen noted that the commitment of Palin backers appeared to have grown in recent months. In a survey taken last November, only 31 percent of Palin backers said they would consider a third party.

But Rasmussen suggests that, at least for some respondents, the third party option is an empty threat.

"During the 2008 Democratic Primary season, a fairly sizable number of Hillary Clinton supporters said they wouldn’t support Barack Obama if he won the nomination," Rasmussen noted. "But, given a choice between Obama and McCain, those voters came around and supported the Democratic nominee."

Palin's overall popularity declined in recent weeks, after a series of perceived blunders following the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson earlier this month.

After taking criticism for having placed Giffords' name on a "hit list" of targeted Democratic districts, Palin accused her critics of "blood libel," a move she later defended despite anger from many groups upset at her apparent comparison of her own critics to anti-Semites.

Recent presidential race poll numbers have swung wildly for Palin. In a poll taken earlier this month, Palin ranked in second place with 19 percent support among likely GOP primary voters, behind only Huckabee at 21 percent. But a poll released Friday had Palin at 10 percent, with Romney in the lead at 28 percent and Huckabee at 15 percent.

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Reporting on criticisms of right-leaning pollster Scott Rasmussen, Politico presented as fact his official bio as “an independent pollster” who “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant.” The article quotes Rasmussen’s critics, but fails to question his supposed independence:

While Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s president, contends that he has no ax to grind — his bio notes that he has been “an independent pollster for more than a decade” and “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office” — his opponents on the left insist he is the hand that feeds conservative talkers a daily trove of negative numbers that provides grist for attacks on Obama and the Democratic Party.

According to the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, Rasmussen has been a paid consultant for the RNC and President Bush’s 2004 campaign. The RNC paid Rasmussen $95,500 between 2003 and 2004 for items listed as “survey,” “survey cost” and “voter data.” Bush’s campaign paid Rasmussen $45,500 for “survey research.”

M.C.L. Comment: When it comes to the Rasmussen polls I always believe the opposite what the poll say. Like the article stated Rasmussen is the first poll firm that right wingers in the media like to cite anytime they want to push their attacks on the Democrat, or if you're like Communication guru and have a kick ass liberal blog the right wingers fill up your comment section with links to the various Rasmussen polls numbers.