Rasmussen Reports: Romney 47% -- Obama 44%

Originally posted by charles1952
I like Rasmussen because they poll likely voters, not all adults or registered voters. This method seems to work and they have a good track record. From the Rasmussen web site:

Our firm has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology). Pollsters for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have cited our "unchallenged record for both integrity and accuracy." During Election 2008, Rasmussen Reports projected that Barack Obama would defeat John McCain by a 52% to 46% margin. Obama was 53% to 46%. In 2004, Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project the vote totals for both candidates within half a percentage point.

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis.

It's a good bet that David Axelrod goes to the Rasmussen Poll first !

Rasmussen = Likely Voters

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I see President Mitt Romney winning 285 Electoral Votes - November 6, 2012

Obama has 9 words wrapped around his neck.

- If you've got a business, you didn't build that ! -

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Romney takes Florida , North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado.

Obama better start on that concession speech right now. - 3 months to go -

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
National polls are becoming less and less useful as the election gets closer and closer.

Time to start looking at the electoral college map and the polling for individual states.


There is a reason the OP is not wanting to do that though...it paints a very very bad picture for Romney at this point.

For example...the latest polling out of Florida has Obama at a +6, the RCP average has him +1.4 over Romney. In Ohio, the latest poll has Obama at +8 and +6, an RCP average of +4.8. RCP has marked Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as leaning Obama. Romney has a very very difficult path with the electoral college map.

National polling is almost always going to be tight...but the information outside of the primaries is useless. This thread is just an attempt to try to promote Romney in a positive light...because he has been killing himself on his overseas trip.

We haven't even had the 3 presidential debates yet!

If the unemployment rate climbs to 8.5%, Obama may not even show up.

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BTW, President Bill Clinton is going to torpedo Obama at the DNC Convention.

Obama called him a racist in 2008.

Originally posted by charles1952
Yes, they weight their results, so does every other pollster. They all weight for age, sex, party affiliation, and who knows what else. That's required for a good sample, it's not a problem.

And no, Rasmussen does not make the majority of it's sample Republican.

Yes...they do.

Originally posted by charles1952
When you say that they have an excessive number of Republicans in their sample, more than any other pollster, you must have some idea of what per centage of their sample is Republican. Would you tell me what it is?

BTW thanks for clarifying the Minn error. Surveyusa...

As to your other Q...From Rasmussen

Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 35.7% Republicans, 33.4% Democrats, and 30.8% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly larger advantage for the Republicans.

Read that again...that is from Rasmussens site...Not only do they poll "likely voters" giving GOP an edge, they weight it to the GOPs advantage as well...or as Steve Singer of the Daily KOS observed..

Even having a likely voter sample that is R+3 is a stretch, given that there has not been a presidential election in the last two decades where the electorate (as measured by the exit poll data) has skewed three points in favor of the GOP. Indeed, over the last three cycles, the average has been roughly D+4.

Given those two bits of detail, it is rather shocking that Barack Obama ever leads in their national tracking poll. Furthermore, it dings the credibility of those numbers

www.dailykos.com...




Edit to add...

So Rasmussen weights..

35.7% Republicans,
33.4% Democrats, and
30.8% unaffiliated

a +2.3 GOP, not to mention the advantage of the "likely voter" vs. registered voter that gives the GOP an additional bias.

Gallup... puts it at
28% Republicans
30% Democrats
41% Unaffiliated

a +2 Democrat

www.gallup.com...

AND Gallup is considered to have slight historical bias toward GOP and they have the populace at +2 Dem...notably when they force a choice..."leaners" (eliminating independants) they manage only a +2 to GOP, still less than Rasmussen...and a polling method that would assume all Ron Paulers etc. would support Romney.

Rasmussen is an outlier and biased toward GOP by intention. Scott Rasmussen was Bush 1 and 2's advisor.




LAST EDIT: Rasmussen apparently tweaked it's numbers today...

www.rasmussenreports.com...

Still polls GOP at higher numbers than Gallup and others (see above) but at least comming closer to reality.

They must be worried about credibility and margin of error as the election approaches.

Originally posted by charles1952
Would you believe it? Some pollsters overweight the Democrats!

With respect,
Charles1952

Yes...1 out of 8?

ATS and Fox News. Two places guaranteed to have poll results that never match any other polls anywhere else in the world.

It wouldn't even be close if Obama didn't have the entire MSM (minus Fox) constantly deflecting and defending him, while always attacking and discrediting his critics.

Originally posted by Indigo5


Expect the race to get crazy ugly....race baiting...smears...birther remix.. as desperation sets in on the right.

/\ /\ /\

This is what you get with that media. People so deluded they think its the right who are desperate and constantly race baiting. Hello, Obama and Democrats have been in charge for a while now. Things aren't going well. Gitmo is STILL open. We're still at war. Obama is the one constantly trying to incite racial division and anger. He's the one making racial discrimination government policy. He's the one making ads target to black people so they'll vote for him based on skin color.

What's the difference anyway, it's not like one politician is much different than the next. One one hand you have bad.. and on the other.. you have bad. The world is not going to suddenly get better because one guy vs. the other wins. Same guy, different face. Admittedly I'm highly cynical about politicians of any sort, it's a bad word around here.

Originally posted by PvtHudson
It wouldn't even be close if Obama didn't have the entire MSM (minus Fox) constantly deflecting and defending him, while always attacking and discrediting his critics.

Thank goodness FoX is the largest MSM
In America

Originally posted by thepresident
Rasmussen always polls in favor of Romney or which ever GOP candidate there is,
it is built into their model. They did the same in 2008 with Mccain

You are incorrect. Rasmussen called 2008 correctly. You may wish to review this.

A third of Americans favor a ban on all television political advertising. Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, says the data “suggests many Americans view political campaigns and political advertising as a form of civic pollution.”

So pleased to hear that this is FINALLY majority opinion.

Rasmussen is not a reliable poll. They heavily weight their numbers towards Republican candidates. They are reliable in that whatever numbers they show (until the very last week of polling before an election) tended to be weighted by about 5% towards the Republican. I've been following them and all the polls for years (since the 2000 elections really) and they are always, consistently, in every poll an outlier by about that much. So subtract 5% from the Republican number and you will have a better approximation of what the polling really is.

Originally posted by thepresident
The Real Clear Politics average is what you should look at because it averages
many polls.

www.realclearpolitics.com...

Obama is currently +2 when you average 8 polls including Ras

RCP is very good. Though the site is itself Conservative and their own writers are very right wing, they reliably collect all polling data worth collecting and average it for their readers and also do well to present writers of the Left and Middle via links of equal prominence to their own and Conservative writers. I disagree with their politics, but I like their evenhandedness in presenting everyone's opinions.

Another great site is Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog:

fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com...

Silver started as a sports statistician and built a big business doing what, by all accounts, was the best fantasy sports statistical analysis in the business. In the last election cycle he turned his considerable skills to analyzing political polls and he consistently proved to have almost near-perfect accuracy in his predictive modeling. In fact, in the 2008 election the only state he got wrong was Indiana, which Obama won by 1%. So he got right 49 of 50 states last go round, pretty amazing.

Originally posted by whywhynot

Originally posted by thepresident
Rasmussen always polls in favor of Romney or which ever GOP candidate there is,
it is built into their model. They did the same in 2008 with Mccain

You are incorrect. Rasmussen called 2008 correctly. You may wish to review this.

In the final week of an election all polling institutions tighten up their belts and their modeling all starts to look alike. Nobody wants to record bad polls in the actual election because that's what everyone looks at in the end. Their polling always drops to the norm at that point, but if you watch them over a long period of time they are always a Conservative outlier. I've been watching them for about a decade now and the trend in their polling is obviously to the Right.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
Rasmussen is not a reliable poll. They heavily weight their numbers towards Republican candidates. They are reliable in that whatever numbers they show (until the very last week of polling before an election) tended to be weighted by about 5% towards the Republican. I've been following them and all the polls for years (since the 2000 elections really) and they are always, consistently, in every poll an outlier by about that much. So subtract 5% from the Republican number and you will have a better approximation of what the polling really is.

The polls that show Obama way ahead in the battle ground states are very heavily

stacked with democrats.

Why even bother?

Stacked Poll = Fiction

the only polls that matter are the ones in the first week of November. All others are essentially meaningless.

Make up your own minds. Decide for yourselves, don't let some silly pollster make you shy away. A poll in July/August is, or should be anyway, meaningless.

Originally posted by seagull
the only polls that matter are the ones in the first week of November. All others are essentially meaningless.

Make up your own minds. Decide for yourselves, don't let some silly pollster make you shy away. A poll in July/August is, or should be anyway, meaningless.

If the election was in only 3 days, which poll would you trust more?

- Rasmussen or the New York Times - ?

reply to post by Eurisko2012


I don't trust any polls.

Speaking from experience, people have been known to lie to pollsters... The couple of times during the '08 elections that I got phone polled I gave two differing answers, and voted for neither of 'em. If I'm any example...I'd not trust a poll as far as I could throw the pollster.

But, if you tied me down and tickled my toes, and pointed a water pistol at my head (unloaded of course...), I'd say Rasmussen is a bit more reliable than the Times... For what that's worth.

Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by Eurisko2012

 

I don't trust any polls.

Speaking from experience, people have been known to lie to pollsters... The couple of times during the '08 elections that I got phone polled I gave two differing answers, and voted for neither of 'em. If I'm any example...I'd not trust a poll as far as I could throw the pollster.

But, if you tied me down and tickled my toes, and pointed a water pistol at my head (unloaded of course...), I'd say Rasmussen is a bit more reliable than the Times... For what that's worth.

In past elections i have noticed Rasmussen with the true results.

During the very last few days before the actual election i have noticed all the rest

of the polling organizations playing a game called -- CYA --.

Very mysteriously their numbers start looking more and more just like the

Scott Rasmussen polling numbers.

reply to post by Eurisko2012


Some how I'm not surprised...

These pollsters all poll the same folks, or so it appears. I'm curious as to where they get their calling lists from...