It doesn’t matter what you believe, the fact is, is that he doesn’t use his own data. Scott has said so himself. He believes that democrats will outnumber republicans by 2%-5% on election day.
Again you don’t have to be a ‘pollster’ to understand second grade math:
If R is winning a larger percentage of the “D” vote than O is winning of the “GOP” vote AND R is winning the “Ind” vote by 10 points then it is IMPOSSIBLE for Rasmussen to be oversampling the “GOP” and still have the race tied. If you cannot understand that extremely basic premise then we are wasting our time trying to educate you. I would have an easier time trying to teach my cat how to play the guitar.
Like a lot of other pollsters, Rasmussen tinkered with his likely voter "model," making it progressively tougher as the campaign progressed (adding other questions to the mix such as political interest). The different models allowed the ultimate party mix to vary from the initial weight target. As Rasmussen explains it:
By Election Day [2004], our baseline was still 35-39-26 but our Likely Voters sample had just over 36% R and just under 38% D. If we [had] adjusted to 37-37-26, we [would have] nailed the actual election results even more closely (our final projection before Election 2004 was within half a point of each candidate's actual total). http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/04/index.html
So, this says very clearly in Rasmussen's own words that he adjusts the base model by some formulaic considerations.
By the way, it’s not 2d grade math. I’ve already shown that placing the differences in a formula applied to the base model after the data is balanced for general demographic concerns removes your concern.
Let’s say you had a dozen previous elections with an average of what percent voted Republican, Democrat, and other. It represented the history of these things.
Look at it like the baseball card of presidential elections.
Now we have THIS season. And this Season your guy is batting .315 but his baseball card says he is a lifetime .287 hitter. Based on that what kind of hitter would you say he is? And if you had to arrive at a number, how would you do it? Would you just average it in or would you add other considerations such as history of past injuries, steroid use, new team with new hitting coach, etc.