Itz News to Me

Over at Patterico, he reports on the latest Presidential polls which includes a Rasmussen report showing a dead heat between McCain and Obama.

But as I commented there, there’s a big problem with Rasmussen’s methodology in this poll:

If you read the full Rasmussen report, you see the following caveat:

For a variety of reasons, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll is less volatile than some other polls and always shows a somewhat smaller convention bounce than reported by others. This is primarily because we weight our results by party identification (see methodology). Looking at the data before adjusting for partisan identification, the Republican convention appears to have created a larger surge in party identification than the Democratic convention the week before. If this lasts, it could have a significant impact on Election 2008.

After running it through the secret decoder ring, this reads:

we’ve seen a significant swing in party self-indication towards the GOP since the convention, but we’re going to wait and see if that continues before we start including that factor into our regular polling adjustments.

Basically, they’re admitting that their current poll results aren’t accurately reflecting what the mood in the country is right now: rather it’s a projection based on a “what if” scenario that requires the Republican base to return to its previously demoralized state. Unlike Gallup, they’re actively factoring out the uptick in Republican enthusiasm rather than simply reporting it.

Barring some major problem with Palin, I’d bet that the Rasmussen polls start moving towards McCain as they will have no choice but to accept that the swing in party self-identification isn’t just a one week phenomenon and correct their current “tweaking” of the raw data.

Tags: Barack Obama, Elections, John McCain, Politics, Polls, President 2008

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