Rassmussen has Bush ahead by 4 to 5 Points

Rasmussen ^

[gilliam]

September 6, 2004--We have been flooded with e-mails asking (in varying tones of politeness) why our poll results seem different from those released by Time and Newsweek.

There are two basic explanations, one involving our polling data and one involving the newsmagazines. For those who need to know the answer before the explanation, the bottom line is that the President is ahead by 4 to 5 points at this time. That's a significant improvement over the past few weeks, but not a double digit lead.

Our current poll (showing the President ahead by just over a point) includes a Saturday sample that is way out of synch with all the days before it and with the Sunday data that followed. In fact, Saturday's one-day sample showed a big day for Kerry while all the days surrounding it showed a decent lead for the President.

It seems likely that Saturday reflects a rogue sample (especially since it was over a holiday weekend). But, it remains in our 3-day rolling average for one more day (Tuesday's report). If we drop the Saturday sample from our data, Bush is currently ahead by about 4 percentage points in the Rasmussen Reports Tracking Poll.

[Nataku X]

Awesome dude. We'll see the "real" bounce on Friday (the first full polling taken after Labor Day).

[Jeff Chandler]

4 or 5 points sounds accurate.

[deport]

Does anyone remember what Scott Rasmussen's final poll for the 2000 Election was? Seems like he was way off in left field somewhere but I can't remember the numbers......

[comebacknewt]

OK. I love Scotty again. (/sarcasm).

I have no confidence at all in his numbers, but 4 - 5 points is pretty close to where I think we truly stand at this point (although it is still a little low). My best guess is 6 - 7, and I am hoping Gallup confirms it tomorrow.

[Right Wing Professor]

Severl FReepers had this figured out already. I'm constantly amazed by the quality of analysis on this site.

[TaxPayer2000]

(in varying tones of politeness)

must be referring to my e-mail :^)

[xzins]

He was off but he wasn't that far off.

His system was not able to detect the voter change due to the last minute revelation regarding Pres. Bush's twenty-something alcohol problems.

His is an automated system where the others have live people calling. Perhaps the surveyors were permitted to use their insights based on conversation with the respondents.

[So Cal Rocket]

Rasmussen had Bush up by 8 points (IIRC) going into election day in 2000.

[sugarbabe]

You are correct, he was way off. All along he had the President winning easily and I remember being extremely disappointed in his numbers. Zogby was the closest in 2000.

[LS]

6-7 is about right and, if Ras was honest here, would align with his own JA ratings for the President.

[skaterboy]

If we get more days like this in iraq then we won't have no lead

PRAY

ITS NOT OVER SO PRAY N FIGHT

[hershey]

Yeah, this is why Kerry's fired everybody in sight and replaced them with Hill's pals. Because things are going pretty well. Kerry had an 'awesome' day yesterday? When he didn't have to bus in fifty people to listen to him drool? When he fought like mad to keep protestors out of the hall? Kerry's doing just fine in an alternate universe.

[Nataku X]

I see his rationale for being so timid. In 2000 the MSM trashed his credibility for being too pro-Bush. Do you ever see the MSM trashing a pollster for erring on the liberal side? Rasmussen has to feed himself after all.

[ableChair]

September 6, 2004--We have been flooded with e-mails asking (in varying tones of politeness) why our poll results seem different from those released by Time and Newsweek.
There are two basic explanations, one involving our polling data and one involving the newsmagazines. For those who need to know the answer before the explanation, the bottom line is that the President is ahead by 4 to 5 points at this time. That's a significant improvement over the past few weeks, but not a double digit lead.
Our current poll (showing the President ahead by just over a point) includes a Saturday sample that is way out of synch with all the days before it and with the Sunday data that followed. In fact, Saturday's one-day sample showed a big day for Kerry while all the days surrounding it showed a decent lead for the President.
It seems likely that Saturday reflects a rogue sample (especially since it was over a holiday weekend). But, it remains in our 3-day rolling average for one more day (Tuesday's report). If we drop the Saturday sample from our data, Bush is currently ahead by about 4 percentage points in the Rasmussen Reports Tracking Poll.

Perhaps this explains Newsweek and Time's choice of normalization? Looks like all the contradictions may lie in faults of the Rasmussen poll -- the Saturday confound.

[skaterboy]

No zogby wasnt closest

Havent we dispelled that myth yet

[aft_lizard]

The problem I see with Rasmussens polls, and somebody may correct me on this, is that he maintains the same group of people to poll, no random sampling so if his core group of people being polled is wrong they will remain wrong until past the election.

[JohnnyZ]

Zogby was the closest in 2000.

Here's a source showing the amount of error by various polls in 2000. Zog, as you now know, was NOT the closest.

http://www.ncpp.org/poll_perform.htm

[deport]

Zogby was the closest in 2000.

---

Actually Harris was the closest.... they had it 47 - 47
CBS had it 45 - 44 Gore
Zogby had it 48 - 46 Gore

[Elle Bee]

polls dont reflect the level of vote fraud .... perhaps he was not that far off

CLICK on IMAGE:

Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens our Democracy

By John Fund

The Florida Fiasco of 2000, with hanging chads, butterfly ballots and Supreme Court intervention, forced Americans to confront an ugly reality. The U.S. has the sloppiest election systems of any industrialized nation, so sloppy that at least eight of the 19 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations for 9/11.

In Stealing Elections, John Fund takes the reader on a national tour of voter fraud scandals ranging from rural states like Texas and Mississippi to big cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He explores dark episodes such as the way "vote brokers" stole a mayoral election in Miami in 1998 by tampering with 4700 absentee ballots. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Motor Voter Law of 1993, Californians used mail-in forms to get absentee ballots for fictitious people and pets, while in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city.

Election officials try to reassure voters by turning to computerized voting machines. But Fund shows that with the new technology come even greater concerns. Early in 2004, for instance, the state of Maryland, which has 16,000 new Diebold machines, commissioned a security expert to try to rig a practice election. He and his team broke into the computer at the State Board of Elections, completely changed the outcome of the election, left, and erased their electronic trail—all in under five minutes.

Stealing Elections gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability—in the 2004 presidential election and on into the future. Writing with urgency and authority, John Fund shows how a lethal combination of bureaucratic bungling and ballot rigging have put our democracy at risk.

John Fund is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and writes the paper's daily Political Diary. He has written on voter fraud and election irregularities for the last decade in the Wall Street Journal, New Republic, American Spectator and other publications. In the past year, Fund has made over 90 appearances on Fox News, MSNBC, C-Span, and CNBC.

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