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| Low favorables: Dems rip Rasmussen |
| 2010-01-04 |
| 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. On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. "Rasmussen Caught With Their Thumb on the Scale," blared the Daily Kos this summer. "Rasmussen Reports, You Decide," the blog Swing State Project recently headlined in a play on the Fox News motto. "I don't think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does," said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. "His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC [Republican National Committee]." "Whether intended or not, Rasmussen polls have been used by conservative voices as talking points, and when that happens on one side it inevitably produces a reaction from the other," explained Mark Blumenthal, a polling analyst and the editor and publisher of Pollster.com. "Rasmussen produces a lot of data that appear to produce narratives conservatives are promoting, and that causes a reaction." 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. Nothing, however, sets off liberal teeth gnashing more than Rasmussen's daily presidential tracking polls, which throughout the year have consistently placed Obama's approval numbers around 5 percentage points lower than other polling outfits. "He polls less favorably for Democrats, and that's why he's become a lightning rod," said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who studies polling. "It's clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person's results." On Saturday, Dec. 26, for example, Rasmussen's daily tracking had Obama's approval at 44 percent, with a disapproval figure of 56 percent. A Real Clear Politics compilation of other pollsters, meanwhile, showed Obama with an average approval figure of 49.5 percent and disapproval of 45.1 percent. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Don't forget that the NYT bestseller book-list had a significant number of conservative books. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-01-04 21:29 |
| #8 Just added Rasmussen Reports to my browser's Favorites tab. Fox news got a lot of new viewers. Glenn Beck was named Man of the Year. Rush Limbaugh's EIB Network sold out all advertising spots. Rasmussen is definitely going to considered a premier polling source from now on. Jealous. Wish I could piss off Obama. |
| Posted by: Glerong Squank1493 2010-01-04 10:56 |
| #7 Gallup and all the other polls that oversample Democrats, however, are just peachy. |
| Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie 2010-01-04 10:22 |
| #6 ...and Acceptance is due after November. That is an assumption, though I don't think the Brazilian Embassy has enough room for them all when the dust settles. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-01-04 07:45 |
| #5 As the last poster said, funny how the dhimocrats never minded it when the numbers looked good for them. Shooting the messenger never accomplished anything guys. Please keep doing it. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-01-04 07:41 |
| #4 In either New Jersey or Virginia, Rasmussen got it right on the button (a 3-pt winning margin for the Republican) and their prediction in the other race was close also. It's funny how the Democrats conveniently forget that Rasmussen's outfit was the first to recognize that Obama was pulling away from Hillary and that he actually OVER-estimated Obama's winning margin against McCain. The Democrats are still in the Denial phase. Regret will arrive as we get closer to the 2010 elections and Acceptance is due after November. |
| Posted by: Jinens Lumplump6738 2010-01-04 04:18 |
| #3 The liberals dont like the numbers so they shoot the messenger instead of dealing with reality. Typical idiotic Stalinist response from the left. What has them twisted in a knot is that of all the major poll companies, Rasmussen has been the most accurate in terms of predictive polls, or so I have heard said. It would be interesting to see how Rasmussen did in NJ and VA compared to the Dems favored pollsters (NYT/MSNBC probably). |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-01-04 04:08 |
| #2 Stalinist political purge threats and attacks against the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had the desired effect, why not exercise the same tactics against Rasmussen? Few surprises here. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-04 04:01 |
| #1 Notice what happens when there are inconvenient truths: 1. Liberals assume that it MUST be ideologically driven. Because that's what they do! 2. The source of the inconvenient truths must be attacked, its credibility destroyed. 3. The very fact that an independent researcher is producing contrary results to The Cause[tm] is PROOF POSITIVE that he is doing something wrong. The idea that things just might not be as they think simply does not enter into the equation. |
| Posted by: gromky 2010-01-04 00:46 |