Posted on 09/05/2004 8:58:27 AM PDT by Turk82_1
Sunday September 05, 2004--The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows President George W. Bush with 48% of the vote and Senator John Kerry with 46%. The Tracking Poll is updated daily by noon Eastern. Two-thirds of the interview for today's report were completed after the President's speech on Thursday night.
Over the past nine days, Bush has been ahead eight times and the candidates have been tied once. Senator Kerry has not been ahead in the Tracking Poll since August 23.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.com ...
Polls taken during the Labor Weekend are not accurate. A lot of people are away from home. Thus, they won't be there to talk to pollsters.
His final polls had Bush up by around 10 in 2000.
He's clearly scared to death to open up a huge lead for either Candidate.. I figured Kerry to be up about 6 after his Convention and Rasmussen was scared to give him anything more than 3 or 4.
I figure Bush was up atleast 8 after this one, and he's scared to give him more than 4.
Has anyone ever been polled by Rasmussen? I am extremely suspicious of this guy.. He claims he's calling 10s of thousands of people every month, and nobody has any info on this?
I have real questions on where he gets the funding to do this kind of polling. Calling 1000 people a day for 3 months straight is a very expensive endeavour. Not even mentioning the cost of the phone calls, but the cost of employees to conduct all of these calls.
Personally I think Rasmussen is a fraud, but other than gut feeling and circumstantial stuff, I have no hard evidence to back it up.
This adds some support to the contention that Time and Newsweek are pulling a rope-a-dope trick with their eleven-point-lead polls. They intend to call Kerry the reincarnation of the Comeback Kid when their next polls are more realistic. Remember, Evan Thomas of Newsweek said the media bias in favor of Kerry is worth 15 points. Rope-A-Dope is just part of the way the media intends to make sure Thomas is correct. Do not fall for the Newsweek/Time stories.
I think the "tracking" part of it does not square with the internals, which he reports on weekly. THere, Bush is ahead by a consistent 10 points, but the tracking showed SKerry ahead....so I wonder about his data reduction.
Still, he is one of the few who does a daily heartbeat that gets publically published, so who really knows.
The refusal rate, exactly.
He claims he's getting 1000 answers a day,.. On statistical averages of hangups and no answers his staff must be placing about 3000+ calls a day.
And who is funding this?
SurveyUSA makes their money by having local TV stations sponsor them
Zogby has MSNBC sponsoring.
Gallup has CNN funding.
Who is funding is Rasmussen?! His premium memberships he's selling? HAH! Yea, I'm sure those are paying for a staff that makes 3000+ phone calls a day /sarcasm off.
This man and his polls are nothing but a complete fraud in my honest opinion.
Rasmussen SEVERELY underestimated the number of cigarettes and liquor miniatures that would be handed out by Democrats on Election Day in 2000.
Exactly. He didn't factor in the vote fraud in 2000. W needs to have a 10 point poll lead at least.
Updated Daily by Noon Eastern
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Right on!
Ras's Premium Membership is a recent thing, and VERY expensive (like I'd ever fund this pack of snoops)
I totally agree with the "let's assume NO bounce" school of thought. Yes, the Big Mo is shifting, but NEVER assume it's in the bag....after all, Douchle may find a lost Indian tribe in your state and have them all vote for Kedwards
>>I don't understand their numbers, they sure don't change much even as all the rest change drastically.
Unless Time & Newsweek were purposely inflated numbers?
Actually, I think it's the way they do the interactive polls - same people so perhaps their minds are made up
Rasmussen weights his samples using a 39% Dem 35% Rep 26% Ind breakdown. He believes that this will be the composition of the actual voter population on November 2 of this year. A large Harris party ID survey (6000 respondents) earlier this year found a simliar partisan breakdown among voters.
Newsweek, LA Times, and others that show wild fluctuations from poll to poll do not weight their samples by party ID at all. Generally speaking, the large spikes and dips in these polls can be attributed to their samples being skewed in favor of one party in one poll, and the other party in the next. In fact, if you apply a more realstic party weighting to yesterday's Newsweek poll, you will get results similar to Rasmussen.
Rasmussen attributes his embarrassing showing in 2000 to his failure to weight his samples by party. He claims that had he done so, his poll would have shown Gore leading by 1, instead of Bush leading by 8 or 9 in his final 2000 poll.
Rasmussen's tracking poll doesn't cost much. It's all automated. The computer randomly generates phone numbers, dials and asks the questions. Can't cost much to do that.
I was called about two months ago and answered something like 20 questions by punching a number on the phone.
One potential weakness: The computer has no idea of who is answering the phone. Could be teenagers, illegal aliens, just plain liars, etc..
It is an automated poll.
He was off badly in 2000 (Portrait of America poll...had Bush up 8 points the day of the election) BUT in the 2002 mid terms he was VERY accurate in all the races...
SO.......
I think he is being very cautious.
They were the most accurate in 1996 I beleive, and missed it the most in 2000.
Hey Tonk .. when did the draft start?? .. not the lottery, just the draft?
Bush JA at 52%. This is the lowest in three days (he was 54% yesterday) and seems to suggest merely a bad polling day for Bush. But either way, as I've been maintaining for some time, with RAS you have to look at the JA rating as an indicator of where Bush really is, and he's very strong. A 52% translates into more than 320EVs. If he gets to 55%, we're looking at 350 EVs.
Rasmussen still has Bush's job approval at 53%. It will be difficult for Bush not to get re-elected if he maintains that level.
I bet the true poll number is in between this and Newsweek. A 12 point overnight swing is hard to beleive since I do not believe there are many swayables or undecided out there.
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