Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Rasmussen Reports polls make use of automated public opinion polling, involving 500 pre-recorded telephone inquiries to land lines for the daily report.[17] These types of polls are believed to produce results at low cost, although some traditional pollsters are skeptical of this methodology and prefer traditional, operator-assisted polling techniques.[18]

Rasmussen's automated survey calls are conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, a firm that licensed methodology developed by Scott Rasmussen.[19] Rasmussen Reports generates revenue by selling advertising and subscriptions.[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmussen_Reports

Criticism[edit]

FiveThirtyEight[edit]

In 2010, Nate Silver of the website FiveThirtyEight wrote the article "Is Rasmussen Reports biased?", in which he mostly defended Rasmussen from allegations of bias.[77] However, later in the year, Rasmussen's polling results diverged notably from other mainstream pollsters, which Silver labeled a "house effect."[78]

He went on to explore other factors which may have explained the effect such as the use of a likely voter model,[79] and claimed that Rasmussen conducted its polls in a way that excluded the majority of the population from answering.[80]

After the 2010 midterm elections, 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.[69] FiveThirtyEight currently rates Rasmussen Reports with a C+ grade and notes a simple average error of 5.3 percent across 657 polls analyzed.[81]

Jonathan Chait[edit]

Jonathan Chait of the New Republic said that Rasmussen is perceived in the "conservative world" as "the gold standard"[82] and suggested the polling company asks the questions specifically to show public support for the conservative position. They cited an example when Rasmussen asked "Should the government set limits on how much salt Americans can eat?" when the issue was whether to limit the amount of salt in pre-processed food.[83]

Other[edit]

The Center for Public Integrity listed "Scott Rasmussen Inc" as a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.[84] The Washington Post reported that the 2004 Bush re-election campaign had used a feature on the Rasmussen Reports website that allowed customers to program their own polls, and that Rasmussen asserted that he had not written any of the questions nor assisted Republicans.[85]

In 2009 Time magazine described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group."[86] John Zogby said in 2010 that Scott Rasmussen had a "conservative constituency."[87] In 2012 The Washington Post called Rasmussen a "polarizing pollster."[88]

Rasmussen has received criticism over the wording in its polls.[89][90] Asking a polling question with different wording can affect the results of the poll;[91] 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.'"[90]

Talking Points Memo has questioned the methodology of Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index, which takes into account only those who "strongly" approve or disapprove of the President's job performance. TPM noted that this inherently skews negative, and reported that multiple polling experts were critical of the concept.[43] A New York Times article claims Ramussen Reports research has a "record of relying on dubious sampling and weighting techniques."[92]

A 2017 article by Chris Cillizza for CNN raised doubts about Rasmussen's accuracy, drawing attention specifically to potential sampling biases such as the exclusion of calls to cell-phones (which, Cillizza argued, tended to exclude younger voters), and also more generally to a lack of methodological disclosure. Cillizza did, however, note in the same piece that Rasmussen was one of the more accurate polling organizations during the 2016 United States presidential election.[93]

A December 2018 article by political writer and analyst Harry Enten called Rasmussen the least accurate pollster in the 2018 midterm elections after stating Rasmussen had projected the Republicans to come ahead nationally by one point, while at the time Democrats were actually winning the national House vote by 8.6 points - an error of nearly 10 points.[94]

Founder Scott Rasmussen is the author of a book,[95] and was a featured guest on a cruise by the conservative media outlet National Review, along with other conservative luminaries.[96]