Sunday, May 13, 2012

Power Line on Rasmussen

John Hinderaker, perhaps the main contributor to the Power Line blog, has an insightful analysis of the Rasmussen Report polling data looking at the Obama/Romney horse race. As of now, Romney is ahead by more than the margin of error.

Hinderaker reproduces the Rasmussen charts and talks about the extent to which Obama's gay marriage approval statement has influenced the data. One thing to remember about Rasmussen's numbers, they tend to be somewhat more conservative than some other pollsters' numbers.

The reason for this "bias" is that Rasmussen polls what he believes are likely voters, whereas other polling organizations poll registered voters. Historically, registered Republicans are more likely to vote than registered Democrats. Therefore more of them are included in the group Rasmussen polls.