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.
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
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..
Correct me if I'm wrong...but isn't Scott Rasmussen the founder of ESPN?
I also believe he is a Republican (calls himself and independent). Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh all tout Rasmussen as being a fair pollster (unlike the bias you get with Zogby who leans heavily and proudly Democrat).
Rasmussen may be playing a different game. With a 10 point Bush lead what is the likely direction it can go? Up? hardly...Down? You bet. So he is keeping it modest and any movement will be seen as upward movement and not downward movement.
Who's to say pollsters don't already have their desired polling numbers for each week of the election...Imagine if Rasmussen planned to release numbers like this
Week 1 Sept Bush up 2
Week 2 Sept Bush up 2
Week 3 Sept Bush up 3
Week 3 Sept Bush up 3
Week 1 Oct Bush up 3
Week 2 Oct Bush up 4
Week 3 Oct Bush up 5
Week 4 Oct Bush up 6
You get bandwagon voteres to vote for your guy all the while not falling out of the other polling outfits numbers in a drastic way.
Make sense?