Quote:
Originally Posted by kcchief19
I don't know that he's leaning toward Democrats being seriously underpolled. Maybe +1, but not much more than that.
Silver initially defended Rasmussen polls in 2010 before turning on them when they underperformed in the midterms.
I don't think Silver's mistrust of Rasmussen polls are political but rather methodical. Rasmussen's polls took a big turn toward Republicans in 2010, and Scott Rasmussen started getting cozy with some key Republicans. Rasmussen is a businessman, not a pollster. I think the perceptions by other pollsters is that Rasmussen uses poor methodology.
All polls biased in one way or another. Whether through sampling data, quotas or screening most polls we see have some "hand of god" influencing them. Typically this is done to fit a profile -- Gallup thinks they know what a likely voter looks like, and no one is going to change their mind, no matter how bad they get the results most of the time.
If you've read any background on the creation of ESPN and the Rasmussens, you'd probably feel very differently about their polls. Scott Rasmussen is a business man, and I have no doubt he'll tilt his poll where the money is.
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It sounds like Rasmussen deserves some criticism, and I can understand why his results would be adjusted. In my case, I'm adjusting the result itself, in Silver's, he's giving it far less weight.
You can look at Silver's analysis before 2010, and he praises Rasmussen. Since then, I was picking up skew without knowing why, but it might be more.
My complaint is that Silver isn't challenging his own employer. The CBS/NYT polls seem so skewed I'm not even using them. I looked into them, and found a D adjustment that can't be defended (+9 last month when I looked). Silver called the CBS/NYT one of the worst in 2010, yet, now that he's paid by them, he's giving it his strongest weight.
This doesn't invalidate Silver's results or methodology. But it does call into question a bias.
My question to you and others is, given you have a point about Rasmussen, why are similar criticisms of polls that favor the Democrats defended so vigorously? Why can't this work both ways? Is your side always right, no matter what?