If you have ever spent any time watching Fox News Network's cable news programming, and especially Bill O'Reilly, you would know just how much the network relies on Rasmussen Reports. Why political commentator Dick Morris is practically a shill for Rasmussen. In fact, during the 2010 election cycle, Fox News commissioned Rasmussen via one of its subsidiaries, Pulse Opinion Research, to conduct polling for the Murdoch owned network. The great irony of all this is, that like Fox News, Rasmussen is also anything but "fair and balanced." In fact a study of more than 100 polls conducted by Rasmussen revealed a pattern of bias towards the Republican Party and a level of accuracy far below that of the competition.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight concluded:" 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. 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."
Silver went on to further point out: "Rasmussen's polls have come under heavy criticism throughout this election cycle, including from FiveThirtyEight. We have critiqued the firm for its cavalier attitude toward polling convention. Rasmussen, for instance, generally conducts all of its interviews during a single, 4-hour window; speaks with the first person it reaches on the phone rather than using a random selection process; does not call cell phones; does not call back respondents whom it misses initially; and uses a computer script rather than live interviewers to conduct its surveys. These are cost-saving measures that contribute to very low response rates and may lead to biased samples. Rasmussen also weights their surveys based on preordained assumptions about the party identification of voters in each state, a relatively unusual practice that many polling firms consider dubious since party identification (unlike characteristics like age and gender) is often quite fluid." Moreover further analysis by FiveThirtyEight revealed discrepancies in Rasmussen Poll results on the subject of the president's favorability ratings which go all the way back to the beginning of the Obama Administration. Rasmussen's byline is "The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere". Surely that claim is a bit of a stretch even when viewed in the most generous light.
In contrast to Rasmussen that had the highest combined error and bias scores, the top tier firms surveying voter sentiment in this election had error scores below 4 points and most had bias ratings below 1.0. These results were obtained even though Rasmussen conducted far more polls than any of its competition. The methodology employed by FiveThirtyEight was to analyze all the polls for average accuracy in predicting the margin of victory for the top two vote recipients and then to see to what extent the polling consistently missed the trends. Thus a very fundamental question comes to the fore. To what extent are the folks who rely primarily on Fox News for their political views being led astray by consistently faulty information? Or to put it another way, how can anyone who is interested in forming an unbiased conservative political opinion do so if Fox News is his or her primary information source? Don't these findings call into question the very integrity of Fox's political and news presentation? How can the Fox News Network continue to display its "fair and balanced" byline given its heavy reliance, if not its incestuous relationship with Rasmussen Reports? Based on the evidence produced by FiveThirtyEight, there is little reason to believe that the conservative audience is being well served if it is spending its evenings watching Fox News in search of fair and balanced programming upon which to shape its opinions. In fact one could conclude that America's conservatives are being deliberately led astray.
At FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver broke down the top ten reasons the public health insurance option is gaining momentum.
In a game of "rock, paper, scissors, bloggers, Washington Post," bloggers/online activists definitely trump Washington Post!
The full list (drum roll please)...
1. The tireless, and occasionally tiresome, advocacy on behalf of liberal bloggers and interest groups for the public option. Whatever you think of their tactics -- I haven't always agreed with them -- the sheer amount of focus and energy expended on their behalf has been very important, keeping the issue alive in the public debate.
2. The fact that the CBO thinks it will save money.
3. The seeming inevitability of health care reform, which neuters the voices of those who aren't opposed to the public option per se so much as the entire project of health care reform.
4. The fact that the locus of power has shifted from the Gang of Six -- Bingaman/Conrad/Baucus/Snowe/Grassley/Enzi to the Group of Six -- Pelosi/Dodd/Obama/Reid/Baucus/Snowe.
5. The "innovation" of the opt-in/opt-out family of compromises, which have more liberal "street cred" than co-ops or triggers and are potentially also much more politically advantageous.
6. The fading from memory of the tea party protests and the "government takeover" meme.
7. Polls in myriad swing states and swing districts showing the public option is reasonably popular in these regions.
8. Constituent letters and e-mails.
9. The insurance industry's "senior moment": forgetting that this isn't 1993 and that the shelf life of a misleading study would be measured in hours (rather than days or weeks) and would damage its credibility in the process.
10. The Washington Post's somewhat bizarre decision to make its poll showing support for the public option its lede in yesterday's paper, even though public opinion has been fairly steady on the issue for months.
In the words of one of Nate's commenters, "Great, simple article. Loved it."
Speaking of progressive group pressure, I made my first appearance on Rachel Maddow Wed night talking about the PCCC's new ad pressuring Harry Reid. Wuddyathink?
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