dagblog - Comments for "Rasmussen Skews Red"

They could, as many pollsters

Doctor Cleveland — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:20:47 +0000

They could, as many pollsters do, model the going rate of their own bias, and try to compensate for it. Or they could try to fix their sample by calling a larger overall number of respondents and throwing out more of the responses that are currently oversampled. If they're getting a population that is 20% whiter than the actual voting population, or has 25% more senior citizens, or is 15% more likely to self-identify as Republicans, you can work out a proportion that uses fewer of those responses. Or they could go crazy and use actual employees instead of auto-dialers and computers.

The point that they're cheap seems to be the valid one, or an overlap between a (procedural) bias that comes from corner-cutting and an (ideological) bias that likes the resulting Republican lean and therefore doesn't want to question it. Of course, in recent years cutting corners to keep your labor costs down, quality be damned, has turned into a core Republican value.

What's most surprising, or most unsurprising, is that Rasmussen is stonewalling rather than responding to Silver's analysis. That he wants to stick with his model even after its results have started to be unreliable suggests a truly Bushlike world view.

Hard to say. Suppose I

Donal — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 19:02:17 +0000

In reply to Ok, maybe. But if they know

Hard to say. Suppose I balance my checkbook. I never get a receipt from the parking garage ~$8 . I often fail to get a receipt from the gas pump ~$30, and often I'm unwilling to go into the station and wait for them to print one. My wife always writes a few checks for this and that and forgets to put them in the register ~$20 - ~$50. So when I balance my checkbook, I only input the easy amounts for which I have receipts or register entries. What mathematical model should I use to correct for the difference?

Ok, maybe. But if they know

Orlando — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:27:55 +0000

In reply to Joyner suggests that they're

Ok, maybe. But if they know they're doing it, isn't there some mathematical model they could apply to correct for the difference?

Joyner suggests that they're

Donal — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:42:27 +0000

In reply to When I read the title of the

Joyner suggests that they're cheap rather than biased:

Rasmussen’s sample is biased because they’re polling on the cheap — using robocalls, which by law can’t dial cell phones, and otherwise cutting corners — rather than because of some agenda to propagandize for the GOP. The end result, however, is the same: Polls that can’t be trusted.

Could be both, of course.

When I read the title of the

Orlando — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:22:16 +0000

In reply to Rasmussen Skews Red

When I read the title of the post, my first thought was, "In other news, grass is green..." But I'm glad somebody is analyzing this stuff, even if it makes my head hurt a little bit to think about it. Because Rasmussen is so far away from the elusive zero, I have to think they are doing it on purpose. Possibly that's because Republican candidates will pay for the good news and it's financially lucrative to Rasmussen as a polling company. I can't think of any other payoffs. Most media outlets commission their own polls during election years, so the Rasmussen polls aren't getting any wider play than others, especially on the major networks. Yes, people want to back winners, but what kind of psychological impact does a good poll truly have on a block of voters? I don't know. I can't see the upside. Maybe somebody can explain it to me.