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How 'bout that Scott Rasmussen?

AdamT

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Scott Rasmussen missed the 12 potential swing states by an average of 5.2% in favor of Romney every time. But I'm sure that in four years conservatives will be telling us that he's the most accurate pollster in the universe. Biased? Nah!!
 
The fool was Dick Morris.
 
Scott Rasmussen missed the 12 potential swing states by an average of 5.2% in favor of Romney every time. But I'm sure that in four years conservatives will be telling us that he's the most accurate pollster in the universe. Biased? Nah!!

I'm not sure that he's intentionally biased considering his strong track record before 2006, but there's clearly something wrong with his polls. In the last three elections we've had a Democratic wave, a Rebublican wave in the midterms, and now a pretty even election. Each time, he's been significantly biased toward the Republicans. I hope he realizes this and adjusts his methodology for 2014.
 
I'm not sure that he's intentionally biased considering his strong track record before 2006, but there's clearly something wrong with his polls. In the last three elections we've had a Democratic wave, a Rebublican wave in the midterms, and now a pretty even election. Each time, he's been significantly biased toward the Republicans. I hope he realizes this and adjusts his methodology for 2014.

Can't say whether or not it's intentional, but there are two obvious flaws in his methodology:

1. He doesn't poll cell phones; and
2. He weights for party ID.

His response is that he thinks telephone polling is becoming obsolete altogether and that pollsters will have to come up with something completely different for 2016. That conclusion would be contradicted by the fact that the polls, on average, have been tremendously accurate in the last three or four elections.
 
His official title is "moral support (bs) data".
 
Can't say whether or not it's intentional, but there are two obvious flaws in his methodology:

1. He doesn't poll cell phones; and
2. He weights for party ID.

His response is that he thinks telephone polling is becoming obsolete altogether and that pollsters will have to come up with something completely different for 2016. That conclusion would be contradicted by the fact that the polls, on average, have been tremendously accurate in the last three or four elections.

The weighting by party ID is the big one I think. The lack of polling cellphones does hurt their results, but can be somewhat corrected for by making sure to get a representative population. Weighting for party ID is just a bad idea. I understand why people think it should be done, but by weighting for it, you end up pretty much controlling what you were trying to measure.
 
so, it turns out rasmussen was at like 25th place or something out of about 27 counted polling stations. Dear me, fancy that.
 
The fool was Dick Morris.

And the bigger fool was Karl Rove. Spent near $400 million of other people's money in his PACS such as American Crossroads PAC and Crossroads GPS SuperPAC on Republican candidates across the nation and got absolutely zero of those he invested in elected.


AMERICAN CROSSROADS
Success rate: 1.29%
Total spent campaign 2012: $104,710,427

- 1.29% of $103,559,672 spent in the general election and ending in the desired result.
- Supported 0 winning candidates ; 0.00% of money went to supporting winning candidates.
- Opposed 2 losing candidates; 1.29% of money went to opposing losing candidates.​


CROSSROADS GRASSROOTS POLICY STRATEGIES
Success rate: 14.40%
Total spent campaign 2012: $70,710,008

- 14.40% of $70,710,008 spent in the general election and ending in the desired result.
- Supported 0 winning candidates ; 0.00% of money went to supporting winning candidates.
- Opposed 7 losing candidates; 14.40% of money went to opposing losing candidates.​
 
Washington AP -- Rove was last seen practicing his burger flipping technique along with Rumsfeld, Bush and the other unemployable losers
 
The lack of polling cellphones does hurt their results, but can be somewhat corrected for by making sure to get a representative population.
Somewhat. Theoretically. However in practice it seems pretty clear leaving out cell phones induced a systemic and meaningful bias.

Plus trying to stretch the polled data to get a representative population is really, really hard to do safely and accurately when you are ditching roughly 1/3 (a number increasing quickly) of the overall population. You need some other very accurate information about the public to try do you scaling on, and then you’ve introduced extra inherent error margins right into your process.
 
Scott Rasmussen missed the 12 potential swing states by an average of 5.2% in favor of Romney every time. But I'm sure that in four years conservatives will be telling us that he's the most accurate pollster in the universe. Biased? Nah!!

Right how foolish of them to believe that the majority of Americans in this country still wanted to work instead of sitting around collecting welfare texting on their Obamaphones all day
 
Right how foolish of them to believe that the majority of Americans in this country still wanted to work instead of sitting around collecting welfare texting on their Obamaphones all day

Polling isn't about *believing*. It's about objectively collecting and analyzing data.
 
Right how foolish of them to believe that the majority of Americans in this country still wanted to work instead of sitting around collecting welfare texting on their Obamaphones all day
I believe that the majority of Americans in this country still want to work instead of sitting around collecting welfare [doing whatever]. Yet is I’m not delusional about who those people will vote for.

But then I’m not so gullible as to buy into the inaccuracy of, and ignorance behind the “47%” myth.
 
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