GOP voters remarkably unenthused about candidates

#27
#27
lawgator1 said:
Old news. Since then, his polling has been way off and he's been criticized for modeling and for very poor question construction. Really weird stuff. In fact, in 2010 he had the WORST record of all major pollsters and missed one race by a whopping 40 points !

From Wikipedia:

Criticism

[edit] Nate Silver

In 2010, Nate Silver of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight wrote the article “Is Rasmussen Reports biased?”, in which he mostly defended Rasmussen from allegations of bias. [22]. However, by later in the year, Rasmussen's polling results diverged notably from other mainstream pollsters, which Silver labeled a 'house effect.'[23] He went on to explore other factors which may have explained the effect such as the use of a likely voter model,[24] and claimed that Rasmussen conducted its polls in a way that excluded the majority of the population from answering. [25] Silver also criticized Rasmussen for often only polling races months before the election, which prevented them from having polls just before the election which could be assessed for accuracy. In response, he wrote that he was “looking appropriate ways to punish pollsters” like Rasmussen in his pollster rating models who don’t poll in the final days before an election. [26]


After Election night that year, Silver concluded that Rasmussen's polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters in 2010, having an average error of 5.8 points and a pro-Republican bias of 3.9 points according to Silver's model. [27] He singled out as an example the Hawaii Senate Race, which Rasmussen showed the incumbent 13 points ahead, where he in actuality won by 53[28] - a difference of 40 points, or "the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998."[27]
[edit] Other

TIME has described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group".[29] According to Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who co-developed Pollster.com,[30] “He [Rasmussen] polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod." Franklin also said: "It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”[31]
The Center For Public Integrity has claimed that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.[32] The Washington Post reported "... the Bush reelection campaign used a feature on his site that allowed customers to program their own polls. Rasmussen asserted that he never wrote any of the questions or assisted Republicans in any way..." The do-it-yourself polling service is used by Democrats as well as Republicans today through a company that licenses Rasmussen’s methodology.
Rasmussen has received criticism over the wording in its polls.[33][34] Asking a polling question with different wording can affect the results of the poll;[35] the commentators in question allege that the questions Rasmussen ask in polls are skewed in order to favor a specific response. For instance, when Rasmussen polled whether Republican voters thought Rush Limbaugh was the leader of their party, the specific question they asked was: "Agree or Disagree: 'Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party -- he says jump and they say how high.'"[34]
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Interesting if you read this that virtually all the polls had a "right bias" with CNN/OR being near equal with Rasmussen.

Also, included in the analysis is a Rasmussen poll from Hawaii that was clearly flawed and off by 40 points! Take out that outlier and Rasmussen's off number would improve considerably.

Since all (but one) polling outfits had a Republican bias it makes sense to assume that people were reporting a greater likelihood to say Republican than they actually chose in the election.
 
#28
#28
Here's the data you presented. Notice that this wild inaccuracy of Rasmussen (across state races) was an outrageous 5.8 points. Sounds terrible but if you look at the most accurate in the group (Quinnipiac) they are off by 3.3 points. So we have a 2.2 point difference. CNN is off by 4.9 points (a .9 point) difference.

Now, remove the flawed Hawaii poll (off by 40 points) and Rasmussen checks in at better than CNN.

Now to the "bias" measure. How much the polls favored Republicans over Democrats. As you can see from the chart the Marist poll had the highest at 4.0 and CNN was third at 2.1. All but one showed this bias to some degree.

Once again, if you remove the Hawaii poll which had a 40% bias towards the Republican challenger and they are less right biased than others in the grouping.

Finally, the author plays fast and loose with some of his facts to attack Rasmussen. Notice the last paragraph

ther polling firms that joined Rasmussen toward the bottom of the chart were Marist College, whose polls also had a notable Republican bias, and CNN/Opinion Research, whose polls missed by almost 5 points on average. Their scores are less statistically meaningful than that for Rasmussen Reports, however, because they had only released surveys in 14 and 17 races, respectively, as compared to Rasmussen’s 105 polls.
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So the small difference is really big because Rasmussen did 105 polls vs 14 and 17 races. I wonder how many "races" Rasmussen released polls for for or vice versa how many polls were released for each of the 14 or 17 races the others covered.

Finally, look at the pass they give one group while slamming Rasmussen

SurveyUSA also issued polls in a number of U.S. House races, missing the margin between the candidates by an average of 5.2 points. That is a comparatively good score: individual U.S. House races are generally quite difficult to poll, and the typical poll issued by companies other than SurveyUSA had missed the margin between the candidates by an average of 7.3 points.

In some of the house races that it polled, SurveyUSA’s results had been more Republican-leaning than those of other pollsters. But it turned out that it had the right impression in most of those races — anticipating, for instance, that the Democratic incumbent Jim Oberstar could easily lose his race, as he eventually did.
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SurveyUSA was inaccurate but they did house races (so did Rasmussen) so it can be expected. We aren't provided with the house performance of Rasmussen to see how they handled these "difficult" situations. Likewise, SurveyUSA's misses are okay since the "impression" was in the right direction. How often was Rasmussen's "impression" in the right direction? We aren't told but I bet it's a good as SurveyUSAs.

This piece is a clear attempt to hammer Rasmussen but it doesn't establish the bias that is claimed - unless you consider CNN/OR to also be a rightwing mouthpiece.
 
#29
#29
Here's the full ratings from the organization 538 (the source of you data)

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: pollster ratings

Rasmussen clocks in at 15 out of about 50. It rates more accurate than:

CNN/Opinion Research
CBS/NewYorkTimes
Newsweek
Harris Interactive
Quinnipiac (interesting since the piece on the House/Senate rated them as best and Rasmussen the worst)
Los Angeles Times
Fox/Opinion Dynamics
 
#30
#30
20 months before November 2010, GOP voters weren't all that enthused either.
 
#31
#31
volinbham said:
Here's the full ratings from the organization 538 (the source of you data)

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: pollster ratings

Rasmussen clocks in at 15 out of about 50. It rates more accurate than:

CNN/Opinion Research
CBS/NewYorkTimes
Newsweek
Harris Interactive
Quinnipiac (interesting since the piece on the House/Senate rated them as best and Rasmussen the worst)
Los Angeles Times
Fox/Opinion Dynamics
Click to expand...

I have a friend who played hockey there. OT.
 
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