Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly

[Slartibartfast]

Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly - NYTimes.com

On Tuesday, polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.


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.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I always chuckle whenever someone quotes a Rasmussan poll.

 

[American]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

So what ?

 

[haymarket]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

Now that was a detailed and well thought out step-by-step response.:roll:

 

[Disputatious71]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

Did all these incorrect polls have the Democrat candidate win in the final election? It would appear to me that the polls reflected more accurately what way the country leaned instead of the "correct" polls that were "fair". Was the bias just in the results? Were these fluctuations within the margin of error most polls have? This just appears to me to be a sore loser article accusing FoxNews of some wrong doing even if the results of the polls reflected the actual outcomes.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

Did all these incorrect polls have the Democrat candidate win in the final election? It would appear to me that the polls reflected more accurately what way the country leaned instead of the "correct" polls that were "fair". Was the bias just in the results? Were these fluctuations within the margin of error most polls have? This just appears to me to be a sore loser article accusing FoxNews of some wrong doing even if the results of the polls reflected the actual outcomes.

They were wrong because they did not accurately predict the results of the election. This is the primary purpose of polls. Its a simple concept.

 

[Disputatious71]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

They were wrong because they did not accurately predict the results of the election. This is the primary purpose of polls. Its a simple concept.

What elections in particular did the polls get the final results incorrect outside its margin of error?

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

What elections in particular did the polls get the final results incorrect outside its margin of error?

I take it that you did not read the article...

 

[American]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

Now that was a detailed and well thought out step-by-step response.:roll:

So what's your opinion on the OP?

 

[Disputatious71]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

I read it but saw no particular examples just generalized statements and no correlating evidence. I would like to see the number of polls that missed both the final results and missed by its margin of error. The article stated their were 105 polls overall so of those it mentioned 13 missing by 10 or more points, were these 13 polls ones that picked a Republican and the Democrat actually won or just that the election results were less than 10% on these 13? Generalizations and no evidence...

 

[pendulum_jaw]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

The conclusion of the article isn't supported by the data. Look at the number of polls conducted by Rasmussen compared to the others. They clearly polled many more elections than others. Some elections are more difficult to call than others and it may very well be the case that there were more instances of difficult-to-call elections in the 105 polls conducted by Rasmussen relative to the number of polls conducted by the other poll takers. In such a case, of course the average error is going to be larger. This is an apples to oranges comparison.

 

[Zyphlin]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

They were wrong because they did not accurately predict the results of the election. This is the primary purpose of polls. Its a simple concept.

Actually, that's incorrect.

The primary purpose of a poll aimed at predicting an election is primarily about that.

A poll trying to tell you how a certain segment of the voting population THINKS however is about that.

As has been said a number of times, polling "Likely Voters" gives you a decent bit of insight into that particular blocks preferences but is a poor indicator for results because it doesn't account for those that may show up but are not considered likely.

What I find funny is that there are so many people just dieing to get their own jab into Rasmussen that we need 3 different threads for basically the exact same topic

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Stron

Actually, that's incorrect.

The primary purpose of a poll aimed at predicting an election is primarily about that.

A poll trying to tell you how a certain segment of the voting population THINKS however is about that.

As has been said a number of times, polling "Likely Voters" gives you a decent bit of insight into that particular blocks preferences but is a poor indicator for results because it doesn't account for those that may show up but are not considered likely.

What I find funny is that there are so many people just dieing to get their own jab into Rasmussen that we need 3 different threads for basically the exact same topic

In this case the polls were prediction polls aimed at predicting the results of the election. I did not reference other types of polls because that is outside the scope of this thread as I see it.

Also, I did not look to see if there were other threads about this topic. I was wrong on that one.