I read the report and I do know we're still weeks away from the final election. In case you haven't realized it, the only way to accurately judge the accuracy of a pollster is comparing their polling to the actual election results immediately following the poll. Things change between the poll and election. Duh.
So you admit that your report is completely meaningless in the context of this discussion? Excellent. We can discard it, then.
Let's just say that each pollsters methodology differs and some are better than others in their accuracy. Rasmussen is one of the best.
No. Please refer to Upchurch's links for how badly they performed in 2010.
In case you don't realize it, polls only reflect sentiment at a point in time. It says nothing about the future.
I'll take it that's a "no", then?
The polls right now say that people's minds will have to change between now and November if Romney wants to be elected. Quite a lot, in fact.
I'm refering to the 8 - 10 point bounce that Silver estimated that the post convention bounce would give to BO. The polls were even just before the convention. BO peaked out at 3.6. Silver was way off.
Citation from the article you linked, please. I've read the article and what Silver said is not what you think he did -- so I'm going to request that you please provide a specific supporting quote.
And your hero Silver noted that Rasmussen and the
third lowest house bias of major pollsters.
From the _
actual article_:
FTA said:
If you are used to looking at Rasmussen Reports polls, your impression may be that their partisan lean is stronger than that. This is not wrong, actually. ... Since Rasmussen Reports is one of the few polling firms to be surveying likely voters, adjusting other polls to a likely-voter basis tends to bring the other polling firms closer in line with it. Without that likely-voter adjustment, Rasmussen Reports would have roughly a three point Republican-leaning house effect.
Which would make it the furthest Republican-leaning of all the polls in his chart.
Seriously, dude, do you read these things before you spam them?
"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." - Nate Silver
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/tracking-poll-primer.html
You fail again -- both by being dishonest in the timeframe, and by simply being wrong. Imprimis, your prior link points to an article from June of this year, and yet the quote you link comes from two articles in October of 2008. Secundus, Upchurch's links above quote Silver in 2010 saying:
Nate said:
Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.
In short, between 2008 and 2010, Rasmussen swung hard to the right and has only swung back by a single point since then. And is, thus, very far away from being one of the "most accurate" pollsters out there.
Hope this helps. Next time, remember that research includes _
reading_ your sources.
