Thread: Rasmussen is the most accurate polling service???

from the research I've done, Rasmussen appears to be the most accurate, and is the only one i really bother keeping an eye on anymore.

does anyone dispute this or think some other service is more accurate/reliable?

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results

I personally follow RealClearPolitics - Latest Election Polls

Originally Posted by Redress

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results

I personally follow RealClearPolitics - Latest Election Polls

Scott Rasmussen has been sending daily poll results and results of all his polls to my email since Obama ran against McCain.....he has gone consistently and steadily more to the right....to the point now, he even writes his own personal right wing rhetoric opnion pages in his emails.
His emails only have right wing commentary sent with them...mostly from Michael Barone.

I no longer consider his polls accurate or unbiased....maybe they are all biased...but his is obviously getting to a much higher degree

Rasmussen uses a tight "likely voter" net; which is a sample of the populace that leans right-ward. Ergo, in right-leaning elections, or in low-participation elections, his model will be more accurate, whereas in high-participation or left-leaning elections, his model will be less accurate.

Originally Posted by jdxprs

from the research I've done, Rasmussen appears to be the most accurate, and is the only one i really bother keeping an eye on anymore.

does anyone dispute this or think some other service is more accurate/reliable?

Nate Silver at the NYTimes thinks otherwise

3. The proliferation of “robopoll” firms like SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports may in and of itself be a problem, or may exacerbate the other problems. About 60 percent of the polls in our database this year were conducted by automated polling firms. Some of them have achieved decent results in recent years. Rasmussen Reports and Public Policy Polling, for instance, have somewhat above-average track records, as measured by the accuracy of polls conducted close to Election Day. And SurveyUSA has had a considerably above-average performance.

But, automated polls are also associated with lower response rates. And some of the firms, like Rasmussen Reports, take other types of shortcuts, like conducting all of their polling in a single evening. Also, as we have mentioned, they almost never include cellphones in their samples. Therefore, it is open to question whether these firms can continue to perform on par with traditional pollsters.

Note that Silver does not say Rasmussen is bad, he does say the company has "somewhat above-average" results but that SurveyUSA has better results.

It is a long article and only one of four that Nate wrote about the accuracy of polling firms, worthwhile read.

Personally I prefer checking those sites which post charts or pages showing the average result from multiple polls.

RealClearPolitics.com/epolls

HuffingtonPost.com - Pollster

PollTracker

Originally Posted by Redress

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results

I personally follow RealClearPolitics - Latest Election Polls

My problem with using the RCP average is that they include polls conducted by partisan firms for both sides.

Originally Posted by cpwill

Rasmussen uses a tight "likely voter" net; which is a sample of the populace that leans right-ward. Ergo, in right-leaning elections, or in low-participation elections, his model will be more accurate, whereas in high-participation or left-leaning elections, his model will be less accurate.

He slants everything to the right as much as he can get away with...and hes getting more obvious every week with his right wing cheerleading opinion pieces....Ive been reading him daily for two years

Originally Posted by cpwill

Rasmussen uses a tight "likely voter" net; which is a sample of the populace that leans right-ward. Ergo, in right-leaning elections, or in low-participation elections, his model will be more accurate, whereas in high-participation or left-leaning elections, his model will be less accurate.

appreciate your opinion, but if this were true, why was Rasmussen so accurate in 2008? based on what you say, that year should have been extremely inaccurate for them, but they were actually one of the most accurate.

Originally Posted by jdxprs

appreciate your opinion, but if this were true, why was Rasmussen so accurate in 2008? based on what you say, that year should have been extremely inaccurate for them, but they were actually one of the most accurate.

He wasn't. What makes you say he was?

In the 2010 Hawaii race, Rasmussen was 40 points out in their prediction for Inouye, giving him a 13 point lead, when he actually won with 53%!