Rasmussen Polls Biased

[Toro]

I don't know if I've ever posted about Rasmussen before. I've never taken a position on whether or not they are a good or bad pollster. I've always thought they were as good as the others. But I posted this because the Right has made the firm an issue, claiming that they were the best pollster. Of course, the fact that Rasmussen is seen as a conservative pollster, and the fact that (in this election) they were biased towards the Republicans just confirms the beliefs to the ultra-partisans. Now, they are defending Rasmussen without understanding the issue. The same thing happened in Canada during the last election with a Liberal pollster. All the hyper-partisan Liberals claimed that this one firm was the most accurate pollster in Canada because they were closest in 2006. Of course, the pollster wound up being one of the most inaccurate pollsters in the 2008 election.

Rasmussen uses a different sampling method in which he identifies Likely Voters. The other pollsters generally use Adults or Registered Voters. The Left doesn't like Rasmussen's method because it some of their constituents have poor voting participation patterns, hence they prefer the other methods which overstate their likelihood of winning.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, that may be one of the reasons why Rasmussen was off this election. They may have been over-estimating likely voters. Generally, the more intense one feels, the more likely one is to participate in a survey. Because the Right felt most intensely in this election, they may have "over-participated" in the surveys given their true distribution in the population.