AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Even a lot of the few thinking people we have on A2K who describe themselves as 'liberal' don't have a quarrel with Rasmussen and a couple have been regularly citing him. His polls are interesting because they are closely following trends which most professional independent pollsters don't. And because they are rolling averages rather than one-shot deals and are usually based on likely voters--he always qualifies his results if he doesn't focus on likely voters--and because he polls people proportionately based on voting registrations, he does have a really good accuracy record.

Cyclop doesn't like him because he makes so many of Cyclops sacred cows look so bad. But we really don't need Rasmussen to accomplish that.

Nah, I don't like him, b/c his results are outliers. He uses a 'likely voter' model which includes more Republicans and Conservatives than any other polling group in the country, and his results are often drastically different than other polling organizations - and always towards the Republican or Conservative position.

Statistical outliers don't usually constitute valid data points, and when one political party continually and ceaselessly quotes one pollster and that pollster only, they sort of reveal the reason they consider them valid - because they agree with your position, and no other reason.

Imagine if I picked a pollster who continually and constantly leaned left on every position - and I do mean every single one - and I only cited them, and pretended that it was an accurate view of the country. Would you accept that as valid? I doubt it.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Don't you guys get it? Foxfyre understands the tax code better than the IRS, who I used as a source.

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

Don't you guys get it? Foxfyre understands the tax code better than the IRS, who I used as a source.

Well, you can't expect the government to do anything better than private enterprise, apparently including knowing their own rules and regulations.

Or something.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

Just wait til Foxfyre puts you on ignore Joe. Then you can win every day like I have been doing for the last few months. I WIN!!

I love Foxfyre's argument that her sources are better than mine when I quoted from the IRS.

1 Reply

@parados,

In addition to her vouching for Rasmussen after reading some biased reports about the accuracy of their polls; that's refuted by the report I posted. Rasmussen falls at the bottom rung for accuracy/reliability with a minus 40.

No wonder her perceptions about politics in the US is so far off! Her sources are not reliable, but she accepts them over most other credible sources.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

Even a lot of the few thinking people we have on A2K who describe themselves as 'liberal' don't have a quarrel with Rasmussen and a couple have been regularly citing him. His polls are interesting because they are closely following trends which most professional independent pollsters don't. And because they are rolling averages rather than one-shot deals and are usually based on likely voters--he always qualifies his results if he doesn't focus on likely voters--and because he polls people proportionately based on voting registrations, he does have a really good accuracy record.

Cyclop doesn't like him because he makes so many of Cyclops sacred cows look so bad. But we really don't need Rasmussen to accomplish that.

Nah, I don't like him, b/c his results are outliers. He uses a 'likely voter' model which includes more Republicans and Conservatives than any other polling group in the country, and his results are often drastically different than other polling organizations - and always towards the Republican or Conservative position.

Statistical outliers don't usually constitute valid data points, and when one political party continually and ceaselessly quotes one pollster and that pollster only, they sort of reveal the reason they consider them valid - because they agree with your position, and no other reason.

Imagine if I picked a pollster who continually and constantly leaned left on every position - and I do mean every single one - and I only cited them, and pretended that it was an accurate view of the country. Would you accept that as valid? I doubt it.

Cycloptichorn

I defy you to find any detectable evidence, other than your own prejudices, that Rasmussen leans any particular direction. If the poll results favor Obama or the Democrats, he posts it and more than often or not comments that favorables have improved. If the poll makes the GOP or any Republican look bad, he posts it and more often than not comments on it.

When you post polls that poll likely voters as regularly and impartially and verifiably as equitably along party lines as Rasmussen does, and from a source that is as regular a guest on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CBS, PBS, AND Fox as Rasmussen is, then such polls merit serious attention.

I don't believe there are any credible pollsters who have EVER faulted Rasmussen's methods.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

I think you would be hard-pressed to find an instance in which Ras showed greater support for a Dem or Liberal position than other pollsters do. It has been my experience that his polls always, without fail, favor the Republican position to a greater degree than other pollsters. In fact, I'd be willing to bet you can't.

As for party ID, no other pollster uses Ras' dynamic weighting; that is to say, he includes more Republicans and Conservatives in his sample than anyone else. So, when you say,

Quote:

When you post polls that poll likely voters as regularly and impartially and verifiably as equitably along party lines as Rasmussen does,

You're making **** up.

Nothing new there though.

Damn, I'm too tired for this today. You go on posting Rasmussen, and I'll go on ridiculing you for showing such an obvious bias. That way we'll both be happy!

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You would be taken more seriously, if you ever posted any other pollster besides Rasmussen, who is notorious for their Republican/Conservative bias.

The polls do tend to lean further to the right than others but that doesn't mean the methodology is wrong. Don't take my word for it, ask the liberal poll geek Nate Silver:

Quote:

In summation, none of these tracking polls are perfect, although Rasmussen -- with its large sample size and high pollster rating -- would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island. Conversely, the only one of the trackers that I consider obviously dubious is Zogby.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/tracking-poll-primer.html

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

That post refers to the reliability of their daily presidential tracking polls during the election, not an overall judgment of the Ras company.

I think an examination of the differences between Ras' polling on Presidential approval, and that of pretty much every other pollster out there, reveals a clear bias towards Republicans in their results. Whether this is caused by their methodology, bias in their questions, or their sample population favoring Republicans over other polls, is debatable; but the evidence is clear that they reliably give results farther to the right than any other pollster out there.

Ican, Okie and Fox would pretend that this is proof that all the other pollsters are wrong, and Ras' is right; but, I'm pretty sure they have that one exactly backward.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

Here's pollster.com's graph that tracks national favorable ratings, with Rasmussen's polling results highlighted:

2 Replies

@old europe,

What's the significant difference between favorable ratings and job approval?

I always went with job approval; more important than whether or not you like someone.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I think an examination of the differences between Ras' polling on Presidential approval, and that of pretty much every other pollster out there, reveals a clear bias towards Republicans in their results.

If by "clear bias" you mean that it tends to look better for Republicans than other polls that alone is pretty meaningless. That meaning of bias, which is really just a tendency towards something, is unremarkable. However you try to portray it as having the more commonly held meaning of "bias" which is to say that it is prejudiced and lacks objectivity. That may be the case but the mere tendency to favor Republicans more in their polls doesn't make it.

Quote:

Whether this is caused by their methodology, bias in their questions, or their sample population favoring Republicans over other polls, is debatable; but the evidence is clear that they reliably give results farther to the right than any other pollster out there.

So what? What makes the other pollsters right and this one wrong? They aren't doing the same things. They use different methodology. You can't assail their methodology or their actual objectivity so you just assail the result and claim it must mean that something is wrong on the way to it.

Quote:

Ican, Okie and Fox would pretend that this is proof that all the other pollsters are wrong, and Ras' is right; but, I'm pretty sure they have that one exactly backward.

See the big problem with your thinking is that you think that any pollster is "right" and that merely measuring one against the others will show who is wrong. That is silly, it's just like the folk who compare search engine results to Google to test for quality. If the competing search engine returns Google's results they are considered to be "accurate" but if they don't then they are considered less accurate.

What they don't get is that Google being the best search engine out there doesn't mean their results are the most "accurate". Similarly comparing polls against each other to decide which is "right" is silly. They are all wrong to some degree, and if you are going to compare it against anything to decide which is the most "right" then you should try comparing to reality instead of other polls.

Nate Silver has done this as well, comparing the polls to actual results, and no Rasmussen doesn't look that bad compared to how other pollsters fare against real world results.

Nate Silver wrote:

My process is to look at the average miss for each pollster across each contest they polled, and compare it to the average miss of other pollsters in those same contest, after going through a more-complicated-than-it-needs-to-be iterative process.

You can read the rest of his post here, but the key part is:

Quote:

'Error' represents the average error for the particular pollster, as compared to the 'IAE', which is the iterated average error for other pollsters in those same contests.

When compared to how other pollsters fare against reality, Rasmussen just isn't the prejudiced and biased pollster that you are portraying them as.

1 Reply

@old europe,

I think showing the actual numbers reveals more than the graph.

Quote:

Announcement: Pollster.com's New Charts and How to Use Them
Click here for our "classic" non-flash chart.

Pollster Dates N/Pop Favorable Unfavorable Neutral
Pollster.................Dates.......... N/Pop........Fav....Unfav........Neutral
DailyKos (D) 9/14-17/09 . 2400 A. . 55... 38 .
Dem Corps (D) 9/12-16/09 1200 LV .......53.. 34 .
Bloomberg ... 9/10-14/09 1004 A...... 61 ... 36 .
Rasmussen.. 9/7-13/09 3500 LV.......50.. 49
ABC/Post..... 9/10-12/09 1007 A ........ 63 .. 35
OnMes(R-RNC) 9/10/09 1200 LV 53 ... 42
DailyKos (D) 9/7-10/09 2400 A ... 56 ... 39
Rasmussen.. 8/31-9/6/09 3500 LV 48.. 51
DailyKos (D) 8/31-9/3/09 2400 A. 52... 43 -
YouGov/Polime 8/30-9/1/09 1000 A . 51 ... 42
Demo Corps (D) 8/30-9/1/09 1000 LV 53... 35
Zogby (Internet) 8/24-31/09 4518 LV 50 .. 48 -
Rasmussen.. 8/24-30/09 3500 LV 49 .. 49 -
DailyKos (D) 8/24-27/09 2400 A.. 55 ... 40 -
YouGov/Polim 8/23-25/09 1000 A .. 49.. 45 -
Rasmussen.. 8/17-23/09 3500 LV 49.. 50 -
DailyKos (D) 8/17-20/09 2400 A.. 58.. 38 -
YouGov/Polim 8/16-18/09 1000 A .. 52 ... 44 -
Rasmussen.. 8/10-16/09 3500 LV 48.. 51 - -
DailyKos (D) 8/10-13/09 2400 A.. 60.. 36 - -

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

I think it's really the other way around: favorable ratings show whether you like someone, whereas job approval ratings just show whether you like the job someone is doing - which implies that the person in question is currently doing some kind of job. Favorable ratings help to e.g. compare how people like Palin vs. Obama, or to show a certain trend for a politician even before he is elected.

Here's the comparison for job approval, though:

I think it's also interesting that in both cases, Rasmussen seems to be more of an outlier on the "disapprove" side of the poll than on the "approve" side.

1 Reply

@ican711nm,

ican711nm wrote:

Rasmussen has claimed he is a Democrat!

I'd like to see that, especially given that he's a Republican.

Quote:

I'd take you a lot more seriously, if you were able to more frequently get your facts straight.

Are you being ironic?

1 Reply

@old europe,

old europe wrote:

I think it's also interesting that in both cases, Rasmussen seems to be more of an outlier on the "disapprove" side of the poll than on the "approve" side.

I've read, but don't have a citation handy, that he doesn't use "undecided" like other polls do. So maybe more people put themselves down as "undecided" in the other polls instead of going as far as saying they disapprove.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

ican711nm wrote:
Rasmussen has claimed he is a Democrat!

I'd like to see that, especially given that he's a Republican.

I would like to have evidence that he is a Republican. I have exhausted all the places I know to look to find what party Scott Rasmussen is affiliated with but so far zilch. I suspect he is careful not to register with a specific party but I don't know. I do know that he doesn't contribute to any political parties or politicians.

John Zogby is an admitted Democrat, but I haven't detected a great deal of bias in his polls either. He is wrong more often than Rasmussen is though. Smile

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

old europe wrote:
I think it's also interesting that in both cases, Rasmussen seems to be more of an outlier on the "disapprove" side of the poll than on the "approve" side.

I've read, but don't have a citation handy, that he doesn't use "undecided" like other polls do. So maybe more people put themselves down as "undecided" in the other polls instead of going as far as saying they disapprove.

I believe he uses Strongly approve, Somewhat approve, Somewhat disapprove, and Strongly disapprove as the options for his 'approval' polls along with a 'no opinion' that would account for the poll results that don't add up to 100%. He does focus on likely voters most of the time which other pollsters seem to do intermittently.

He generally posts a dual formula for the Presidential and Congressional approval ratings showing the differential between the Strongly approve and Strongly disapprove and tracking how that changes from day to day, week to week, etc. and then also shows the differential between all who at least somewhat approve versus all who at least somewhat disapprove.

0 Replies

This is from Wiki:

Quote:

Criticism

Democratic Party activists have pointed out that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.[10] Rasmussen Reports have also performed paid work for Bush opponents. For example, After Downing Street commissioned a poll on the impeachment of President Bush. [11]. According to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, while there are no apparent records of Scott Rasmussen or Rasmussen Reports making contributions to political candidates and its public election polls are generally regarded as reliable, "some observers have questioned its issue-based polling, which frequently tends to elicit responses that are more conservative than those found on other national surveys."[12]. Rasmussen polling numbers of presidential approval ratings tend to be an outlier among samples taken from other polling organizations.[13]

John Marshal of Talking Points Memo has said, "The toplines tend to be a bit toward the Republican side of the spectrum, compared to the average of other polls. But if you factor that in they're pretty reliable. And the frequency that Rasmussen is able to turn them around " because they're based on robocalls " gives them added value in terms of teasing out trends."[14] Some have speculated that the reason Rasmussen's polls trend more Republican than other mainstream polls is simply that he samples likely voters.[15]

In 2004 Slate magazine “publicly doubted and privately derided" Rasmussen's use of recorded voices in electoral polls. However, after the election, they concluded that Rasmussen’s polls were among the most accurate in the 2004 presidential election.[16] Near the end of the 2008 Presidential Election, progressive statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed the eight national presidential tracking polls. Silver concluded that while none were perfect, "Rasmussen -- with its large sample size and high pollster rating -- would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."[17]

MSNBC does not use Rasmussen polls.[18] Conversely, conservative media frequently refers to Rasmussen, praising them for being the first to ask about a relevant issue or to ask questions that other pollsters do not.[19][20]

On Slate Magazine, also from Wiki:

Quote:

Slate's focus and editorial slant is politically liberal, as seen in choice of columnists, choice of and position on topics, and featured cartoon, Doonesbury

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I am amused to find that a discussion of "American conservatism" in 2008 and beyond has devolved into a slanging match about how much disapproval is being expressed for a liberal president.

Not really much about conservatism in the conversation just at the moment.

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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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