An in-depth look at Rasmussen and vintage Democratic whine
[Posted by Karl]
Ed Morrissey and DRJ have both covered the Politico’s indulgence of lefty whining about inconvenient polling:
Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.
The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.
Notably, the weakest quotes in the piece are from actual pollsters. The Politico’s Alex Isenstadt talked to Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin, both of whom observed only that Rasmussen’s polling is less favorable for Democrats and is used frequently by Republicans. This is not surprising, as both have addressed the topic at length in the face of the ongoing lefty whining about Rasmussen.
In December 2009, Mark Blumenthal charted the “house effects” of the pollsters charted by Pollster.com in a post about Rasmussen’s results. Blumenthal identified at least three possible reasons why Rasmussen tends to show Obama with lower approval and higher disapproval than most (but not all) pollsters: (1) sampling likely voters; (2) giving them four possible answers (strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove); and (3) the robo-calling method. While Blumenthal thinks the robo-calling is a minor factor, Democratic polling firm PPP uses the same method to reach registered voters and also tends to show lower approval for Pres. Obama. Thus, this part of the Politico story is not surprising, either:
“The way he does polls is that he’s more likely to get high-energy voters,” said Tom Jensen, a pollster for the North Carolina-based Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. “I think Rasmussen favors Republicans this year, but I don’t think he inherently favors Republicans.”
Blumenthal’s charts show similarly large “house effects” that inflate Obama’s approval number (CBS/NYT, Ispos/McClatchy, CNN and ABC/WaPo) and deflate his disapproval (CBS/NYT, Pew). His colleague Charles Franklin produced charts for each pollster that make the same point in a slightly different way.
These charts demonstrate one of the common righty responses to the Politico story — that the establishment media never does stories about the Right’s complaints against polls like CBS/NYT, ABC/WaPo and CNN. The charts also underscore the degree to which the Politico story appears to have been written simply to advance a lefty narrative. After all, this story could easily have been written to advance the narrative that “lefty bloggers complain about Rasmussen, but pollsters the Politico interviewed do not back their complaints.”
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Note: I previously addressed lefty complaints about Rasmussen’s polling on ObamaCare, finding them wanting.
Update: Lefty blogger Nate Silver (because he knows better) adds a new spin — Rasmussen may not be biased, but news outlets that cite Rasmussen too much may be biased. Yet during the 2008 campaign, Silver rated Rasmussen one of the most accurate pollsters.
–Karl
if your methodology is consistent then a trend is a trend… and that’s the value of polling irrespective of where the bottom line approval falls. The dirty socialists and politico want to obscure that what the little president man is doing is Fail.
happyfeet (e9e587) — 1/3/2010 @ 1:58 pmRahm is no fool. He knows Rasmussen is accurate. Would that he bought this weak attack. Same for the political pros who have told the sitting Dems in congress who have “retired” to not bother to run in 2010.
Ed from SFV (1333b1) — 1/3/2010 @ 1:58 pmFrom the Update: Silver acknowledges Rasmussen is “one of the most accurate pollsters” but Silver also says that news outlets who inform their audience of Rasmussen’s results too much are biased against Obama.
So, while too much is too much, and accurate results are accurate results, it seems that Silver is OK with Rasmussen’s accuracy as long as the news media keeps quiet about it.
ropelight (58ef71) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:31 pmRahm is once again trying to dance around the issue…
http://www.texemarrs.com/images/rahm_ballet_01.jpg
GeneralMalaise (68a574) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:34 pmOr is it more a case of skirting the issue???
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/arts/2008/11/16/2008-11-16_rahm_emanuels_role_as_pointe_man_means_n.html
GeneralMalaise (68a574) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:39 pmThey just want to play hide the decline with the Democrat poll numbers because the truth is so inconvenient. After attacking Limbaugh, Palin, Fox News, Tea Party attendees, insurance companies, greedy bankers and Wall Streeters, businesses who are more interested in their profits than hiring workers (e.g. businesses need to make money to hire workers or have some uncertainty removed over what you’re going to do to them Odumbo), who is left to blame for the falling poll numbers? It can’t be the Democrats so there must be another villain, hence the focus on Rasmussen.
daleyrocks (718861) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:39 pmPolitico, which began as a hopefully more neutral source than the NY Times, for example, has become one more lefty source. Real Clear Politics, as an aggregation site, is more neutral. Politico has lost their reputation for objectivity and that will hurt them.
Mike K (2cf494) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:49 pmSince so much of Obamy’s current poll numbers have been driven South by the debate on Pelosi/Reid-Care,
AD - RtR/OS! (06f36f) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:51 pmI’ll bring up this insight derived from an AP article on the NHS in Britain…
The hook of the story is the vastly increased costs to NHS treating alcohol-related illnesses and injuries over the past several years.
It brings to mind that during the 80’s, as the Soviet Union was imploding, one of the great social costs/leading indicators, was the immense scope of alcoholism in Soviet society.
Is this going to be another “advance” that we will adopt from our EU betters?
“… for example, has become one more reliable lefty source…”
There, Mike, fixed that for you.
AD - RtR/OS! (06f36f) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:52 pmIt has been pointed out time and time again that MANY of the polls favoring lefty issues/causes WAY OVERSAMPLED Democrats–far out of line with the actual D-R breakdowns.
RB (9c47f9) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:54 pmThey just do that to get a more “believable” response.
AD - RtR/OS! (06f36f) — 1/3/2010 @ 2:57 pm“They just do that to get a more “believable” response.”
AD – Scientific, legitimate, realistic, unbiased, etc., etc., work as good Democrat substitutes for “believable.”
daleyrocks (718861) — 1/3/2010 @ 3:01 pmOh, yeah, I forgot about the “scientific consensus” re AGW!
AD - RtR/OS! (06f36f) — 1/3/2010 @ 3:11 pmThat’s why Climategate happened. Those pesky scientists are just useless when it comes to hiding declines. Silly amateurs got caught like rats in a trap yapping back and forth in emails.
Important matters like an International Hoax ought to be left to experienced men, like Algore and his band of lefty pollsters.
ropelight (58ef71) — 1/3/2010 @ 3:27 pmChuckles Johnson is trying to get me banned over at bloggingheads.t.v. and asking his loyal band of sycophants to help him out too by e-mailing the masthead over there.
I guess we’ll see if his ban-stick can reach that far.
Blazer (4251ee) — 1/3/2010 @ 3:29 pmNate Silver is a liberal hack who’s never met a poll with bad numbers for liberals that he wasn’t ready to declare illegitimate in one way or another. The man is a fraud.
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Not Looking Good: Obama’s Presidential Approval, Month by Month for 2009… Left-wing Extremists Attack Pollsters for Bad Poll Numbers « Frugal Café Blog Zone (a66042) — 1/3/2010 @ 8:15 pmBasically it comes down to a most classic case of the media bias being so pronounced to the left, that anyone who doesn’t share it is considered by the left to be biased to the right.
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