Shooting the messenger: Democrats go after Rasmussen for bad poll numbers

Faced with rotten poll numbers everywhere, Democrats have decided to single out Rasmussen for their woes.

From Politico:

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

[snip]

While Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s president, contends that he has no ax to grind — his bio notes that he has been “an independent pollster for more than a decade” and “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office” — his opponents on the left insist he is the hand that feeds conservative talkers a daily trove of negative numbers that provides grist for attacks on Obama and the Democratic Party.

Nothing, however, sets off liberal teeth gnashing more than Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking polls, which throughout the year have consistently placed Obama’s approval numbers around 5 percentage points lower than other polling outfits.

“He polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who studies polling. “It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”

This has to be the silliest thing yet. Poll after poll by every organization out there points to Democrats loosing support.  This is an inescapable fact. Whether Rasmussen shows things a point or two worse makes no difference. The truth remains that Americans are not feeling the Democratic grove and why should they?  Since January last year Americans have received nothing but arrogance, wild spending and a deaf ear from the Democrats.  I cannot remember when a political party was so obtuse to the anger they were generating with the electorate. Now with the bumbling of a terror attack, Democrats should brace for impact because the numbers are bound to get worse.

Oh and speaking of the numbers, one of the complaints Democrats have is that Rasmussen screens for likely voters rather than all adults. They feel that when you do this, young voters and minorities are under represented.

Rasmussen, for his part, explained that his numbers are trending Republican simply because he is screening for only those voters most likely to head to the polls — a pool of respondents, he argues, that just so happens to bend more conservative this election cycle.

Polling all adults — a method used by Gallup, another polling firm that conducts a daily tracking poll of Obama — Rasmussen acknowledged, is “always going to yield a better result for Democrats.”

But critics note that the practice of screening for only those voters regarded as most likely to head to the polls potentially weeds out younger and minority voters — who would be more likely to favor Democrats than Republicans.

Ignoring likely voters maybe a comforting thought for Democrats, but the reality is the people who show up at the polls are the ones who will make or break you. Since likely voters are trending conservative, then Democrats need to stop shooting the messenger and wake up to the fact that they are going to get their clocks cleaned in November.

Via: Memeorandum

Via: Politico