There’s a new poll out this week that contains good news and bad news for Oregon Republicans.
The good news: The poll shows their candidate, Chris Dudley, leading Democrat John Kitzhaber by a one-point margin.
The bad news: It’s a Rasmussen poll.
The telephone survey of 500 “likely voters” found 45% favoring Dudley, 44% favoring former governor Kitzhaber, 4% favoring somebody else and 6% undecided.
“Dudley, a former professional basketball player who now works in the financial industry, captured 40% of the vote last Tuesday to win a crowded GOP Primary,” Rasmussen says. Whether it’s accurate to call it a “crowded GOP primary” is debatable; there were a bunch of candidates on the ballot, but only two of them – Dudley and Allen Alley – were serious contenders.
The trouble with putting much stock in a Rasmussen poll is that Rasmussen consistently gives Republican candidates significantly higher numbers than virtually any other polling outfit.
The Daily Kos commented on this phenomenon the other day, claiming that Rasmussen “cares only about setting the narrative that Democrats are doomed” and backing it up with a chart that shows Rasmussen is consistently an outlier among pollsters, typically favoring Republicans by about 5% to 10%.
Even “Rupert in Springfield,” a frequent and solidly Republican commenter on the conservative Daily Catalyst blog, couldn’t get enthusiastic about the poll: “I hate to say it but if you are only up one point in Rasmussen, you are dead as a Republican. I will be stunned, and I mean absolutely stunned, if Kitzhaber doesn't win by five points or better.”
written by H. Bruce Miller , May 26, 2010
written by H. Bruce Miller , May 26, 2010
As I said, we'll see what happens on Election Day.
written by Seann , May 28, 2010
Critic, using your own example of how easy it is to get the truth, you could easily learn how ridiculous your defense of Fox News is. And can you talk show neo-cons kindly stop with the "mainstream media" nonsense? Fox News is as mainstream as they come.
Perhaps the reason Rasmussen has more Republican support in his polls is that unlike many other polls, he canvasses likely voters and not just anyone who answers the phone. In any event, if Rasmussen is so biased, then he must certainly perform poorly when compared to other pollsters, especially like Gallup or Reuters.
Oh look what I found by spending 2 minutes on the internet using the search "pollster performance."
From www.electoralmap.com:
"The table below is an assessment of pollster performance in the 2008 Presidential election. The pollsters were graded on both the accuracy of their final poll (popular vote) and the consistency of their polling during the month of October.
The overall score is a weighted average of their Accuracy and Consistency numbers. The weighting is 75% accuracy and 25% consistency."
Overall
Poll Score Grade Accuracy Consistency
Rasmussen Reports 91% A- 92% 86%
Ipsos/McClatchy 89% B+ 92% 79%
CNN/Opinion Research 88% B+ 92% 77%
Fox News 84% B 92% 61%
Pew 83% B- 92% 56%
GWU/ 77% C+ 77% 79%
NBC News / Wall St. Journal 76% C 77% 75%
Gallup Traditional 73% C- 77% 63%
Marist 67% D+ 62% 82%
ABC News / Wash Post 67% D+ 62% 82%
IBD/TIPP 66% D 77% 34%
Gallup Expanded 66% D- 62% 78%
CBS News / NYT 60% D- 62% 56%
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby 35% F 31% 48%
HBM, I see how well your mainstream liberal biased news operations performed. That would be NBC, ABC, CBS (and the New York Times). Oh and looky where that big, bad, bigoted, biased faux Fox News ended up. How could they have ever predicted an Obama win anyway?
Once again, with two minutes of work/research, you would have known the truth. But then again, truth is only the truth when it is the "liberal" version, right?