For those of us that have been complaining about the obvious Republican bias in Scott Rasmussen's polls since Obama was sworn in, all while the mainstream media called us hyperbolic, we now finally have the definitive takedown by numbers guru Nate Silver following the 2010 elections.
The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.
Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.
In the past, Rasmussen 's goal was to use his biased polls to help shape the media narrative for the Republicans (well, mission accomplished). The trick though was to fix his methodology as the actual voting approached so he wouldn't look like such an outlier, but apparently he got too cocky this season. Can we all now agree to ignore Rasmussen forever?
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