“ this poll is right in line with all of their previous polls”
Well yes all of THEIR previous polls of course. Just to be clear l guess should have said Rasmussen seems to be a bit of an outlier and l would feel better if a few others matched theirs.
which is why you look at the average of ALL polls like they do on realclearpolitics.com
so if their are 3 right leaning pollsters
and 3 left leaning pollsters
and 8 middle of the road pollsters
the right and the left ones will cancel out in an average of all of them.
Both sides love to latch onto the polls which lean their way and then ignore the others are call them trash, when in reality they are all very useful in various ways. When you see any poll compare it to the average, and then also compare it to their past polls to see if there is any movement.