His final poll for president in 2008 was good. He sucked in 2010 and was average in 2008 for non-presidential races. Well, that's not what unskewed means, but maybe that's what it means to you. In any case, that's not what's going on here. It's more like "use the best case number for Republicans, which is Rasmussen's, and apply it to other pollster's polls". Truth is, you don't know what today's ratio of R vs. D is. You like Rasmussen's number because his is highest. And there is a serious lack of science in taking the raw numbers from a poll and applying only that weighting. I didn't hear about that. Do tell! barfo
I like Rasmussen's number for republicans and democrats because it fits the results we've seen (for the most part) and the obscure fact that he's surved hundreds of thousands of people to arrive at his number. What results have we seen? Near 50-50 elections in 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992... As far as taking raw numbers from the polls and applying a truer ratio of democrats to republicans goes, that's not what they're doing.
Yes... but there are independents too. Depends on who 'they' is. The unskewing people, that's exactly what they are doing, except for the truer part. barfo
Even an ancient person like me doesn't have a land line anymore. A poll that depends upon land lines is going to have very serious sampling bias. Now, it's possible to correct for that... but it's a fact that the polls that include cell phones get different results (even after corrections) than the polls that don't. barfo
So, 40% democrats, 20% republicans, 40% independents and 3/4th of the independents vote republican? (I don't think so). The unskewing people are not taking raw numbers from the polls and manipulating those in any way. They're taking the final results as manipulated by the pollsters (skewed) and removing the big oversampling of democrats from the weighting.
I don't think so either. Where did you get 40/20/40? That's not accurate. They are imposing Rasmussen's very high percentage of R's on the data. It's totally manipulating the data, in exactly the same sense as the pollsters manipulated the data, but done purely for political purposes. Even Rasmussen, while biased, has some science; this guy is just trying to make the numbers look good for Romney, science be damned. barfo
From the actual presidential election results. Even Bob Dole got 41% of the vote, and that was with a strong independent 3rd party candidate giving independent voters a solid alternative choice. You have it backwards. All the polls but Rasmussen are biased if they're weighted as if there are just 24% republicans. Science be damned, indeed. They're also not manipulating the data, they're using the pollster's final data and all the science that goes into it. Poll says 93% of democrats support Obama and 90% of republicans support Romney. Achieved via the poll's methodology, science, weights, etc. For example, take 1000 people. 37.6% will be republican, or 376, but only 90% will vote for Romney. That's 338 votes. 33.3% will be democrats or 333, but only 93% will vote for Obama. That's 310 votes. Of the rest, (1000 - 376 - 338 = 286), 51% vote for Romney, 40% for Obama. 51% of 286 is 146. 40% of 286 is 114. So Obama gets 114+310 = 424, and Romney gets 146+338 = 484. 6 point advantage Romney. I mentioned voter turnout suppression in a previous post. I live in California. Though I'm going to vote for Gary Johnson, my vote otherwise would not matter because Obama's clearly going to win the state by a huge margin. Republicans may as well stay at home. Hell, democrats may as well stay at home, too. By reporting bad polling numbers for Romney, don't you think many republicans will figure it's not going to matter, so they won't go vote? So 25% of republicans did not show up at the polls in 2008. Bush fatigue, overwhelming media failure to look at Obama's resume, McCain not so popular a candidate with his own party, big money discrepancy, etc. When they did turn out at the polls in 2010, it was a miserable election for Democrats. What pollsters other than Rasmussen do is they are using the exit polling data from 2008 in their weighting formulae. That exit polling data reflects the 25% who did not show up at the polls, and results in a massive undersampling of republican voters in their polls. The media is a 24/7 Obama commercial, for the most part. Reporting the election is over, may as well stay home republicans, is a form of voter suppression, no? I should also note that I'm not seeing a flaw in the methodology. But you can't use Rasmussen's national party affiliation data to unskew state polls.
Interesting review of the 2008 voter turnout by American University. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/06/pdf.gansre08turnout.au.pdf A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout. The percentage of eligible citizens voting Republican declined to 28.7 percent down 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 percentage points from 28.7 percent of eligibles to 31.3 percent. It was the seventh straight increase in the Democratic share of the eligible vote since the party’s share dropped to 22.7 percent of eligibles in 1980. ... “Many people were fooled (including this student of politics although less so than many others) by this year’s increase in registration (more than 10 million added to the rolls), citizens’ willingness to stand for hours even in inclement weather to vote early, the likely rise in youth and African American voting, and the extensive grassroots organizing network of the Obama campaign into believing that turnout would be substantially higher than in 2004,” said Curtis Gans, CSAE’s director. “But we failed to realize that the registration increase was driven by Democratic and independent registration and that the long lines at the polls were mostly populated by Democrats.” Gans attributed the GOP downturn to three factors: 1) John McCain’s efforts to unite the differing factions in the Republican Party by the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominee was a singular failure. By election time many culturally conservative Republicans still did not see him as one of their own and stayed home, while moderate Republicans saw the nomination of Palin reckless and worried about McCain’s steadiness. 2) As events moved towards Election Day, there was a growing perception of a Democratic landslide, discouraging GOP voters. 3) The 2008 election was a mirror image of the 2004 election. (My note - 28.7% of eligible voters is not the same thing as 28.7% of those who turned out)
And this Fordham.edu study says Rasmussen was the most accurate pollster in 2008 (Obama/McCain popular vote). http://www.fordham.edu/images/acade...ccuracy in the 2008 presidential election.pdf Not only does it say that, but it also states: Four of these polls appear to have overestimated McCain support (indicated with a * below), while most polls (17) overestimated Obama strength. Pre-election projections for two organizations’ final polls—Rasmussen and Pew—were perfectly in agreement with the actual election result (**). So, barfo, is the science behind the 17 wrong polls somehow good? Rasmussen is biased. My ass.
Yes, Rasmussen is biased. Your ass. Getting one poll correct doesn't prove a pollster is unbiased, except in regards to that one poll. Having a significant history of biased results over a large number of polls, on the other hand, does prove a pollster has a bias. Rasmussen has a significant history of biased results over a large number of polls, therefore, Rasmussen is biased. barfo
But he doesn't have a history of biased results. They're accurate, but you don't like the results. The bias is in those 17 polls that overestimated Obama strength. You like those poll results, but they're not accurate. So what exactly are you arguing about?
Right. You were out of ammo in post #17. Thanks for correcting me I'll paraphrase something I read in one of Nate Silver's blog posts this morning: "People like to cite Rasmussen's considerably good track record (which really is good), but I don't like the way he does his polls."
Since post #17 wasn't even mine, I'll assume you are just talking out your ass today instead of at least feebly trying to make an argument? I'll paraphrase something I read in your posts today: "I've got no argument whatsoever, so I'm just going to pretend I'm too dumb to understand that" barfo
What I read in your posts is "I refuse to listen to logic. I've made up my mind and no amount of evidence will change it."
