Among the things we knew were his focus on polling likely voters, as opposed to registered voters or all adults. He argues that only those likely to vote will influence the outcomes of elections, a viewpoint of immense common sense.
We also knew of his division of the electorate into the "mainstream public" and the "political class." Read the interview to see how he determines an individual's membership in one or the other group. He finds membership in either group very predictive of the individual's attitudes on key policy issues.
Among the things we didn't know, but should have suspected about Scott Rasmussen was his history of entrepreneurship. The interview says of Scott and his sports broadcaster father:
Using $9,000 charged to a credit card, they created the Entertainment Sports Programming Network, or ESPN. They soon scored a major investor in Getty Oil and launched in 1979. Within a few years, they had millions of viewers.The Rasmussens sold their ESPN interest in 1984 when Scott was 22. Another thing I didn't know was his belief that understanding the tea party movement is very important. He says:
This will be the third straight election in which people vote against the party in power. The GOP will benefit from that this year, but 75% of Republicans say their representatives in Congress are out of touch with the party base. Should they win big this November, they will have to move quickly to prove they've learned lessons from the Bush years.COTTonLINE concurs.
