Rasmussen's polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters in 2010

[Truthseeker420]

Two very different polling organizations have taken their lumps since Election Day now that voters have actually spoken and pre-election forecasts can be judged by the results at the polls. One is the venerable Gallup organization whose name, after 75 years in the business, is synonymous with polling. The other is Rasmussen Reports, founded in 2003, which has made itself known by the sheer volume of national and state surveys it churns out during each election cycle.

Gallup is a traditional pollster which, like the Pew Research Center and most major news organizations, conducts its surveys based on telephone interviews, (including cell phone-only households, which it added in 2008). Rasmussen is what is known as an IVR pollster (for "interactive voice response") which relies on automated calls that ask those being surveyed to give their responses by selecting a number on their keypad. Rasmussen does not reach cell phone-only households.

Gallup's headache was that its final "generic" congressional ballot poll predicted a whopping 55 percent to 40 percent advantage for Republicans, a result that surprised many because of the size of the margin compared to similar surveys by other organizations. By comparison, polls by Pew, New York Times/CBS News, Wall Street Journal/NBC News and Washington Post/ABC News had Republicans ahead by margins ranging from four to six points.

True, when it came to winning control of the House, the Republican victory was sweeping, netting a gain of 60 seats, more than the 1994 landslide that returned the GOP to power in that year. But the actual popular-vote margin for the congressional elections was much closer to the predictions of the other major pollsters and ended up being about half of what Gallup forecast.

Writing on the Huffington Post's Pollster.com, political scientist Alan Abramowitz said, "Not only did Gallup miss the actual vote margin by a mile, but their projections about the composition of the midterm electorate were also way off the mark. Based on the exit poll results, it appears that the actual electorate was not nearly as male, old, Republican, or conservative as Gallup's final likely voter sample."

Two Pollsters Take Their Lumps Based on Election Day Results