http://www.rasmussenreports.com/...
Weird, considering the conventional wisdom around here. My guess is we're looking at two possibilities:
- Rasmussen is the mouth piece of the vast right-wing conspiracy and isn't to be dealt with even with ample 10-foot polls
- Many conservatives may be shy tories - which many might mistakenly call a bradley effect come election day.
The problem here is that many polls see a larger number of democrats than republicans. These polls also show a veritable pile of independents, however. Are they really independent, or do they simply want to stand as far from the modern Republican brand as possible? And when they're presented with the choice, are they going to pull a new lever (yes they can!) or revert back to the party they wouldn't admit being a member of in public (4 more years!).
Compare Ras to our R2K poll:
On 10/2/04:
Ras: 38.4% D, 34.4%R
R2K: 35%D, 26% R
What the hell kind of question, polling method, or otherwise is making that difference appear? Somebody's way off base here, and the only good news is that both show a Democratic advantage. R2K had an even bigger gap on 9/11, 36D 26R. Is R2K missing the shy tories? Does Rasmussen have the power to bring them out of hiding for their polls? Or are there even more than we imagine?
Let's look closer at what that gap does to polling today:
Ras: Obama +7, D/R gap of 4 points
R2K: Obama +11, D/R gap of 9 points
That is to say, in the R2K poll the Obama/McCain difference is ~2% bigger than the R/D gap and in the Ras poll it's ~3% bigger.
All of the sudden the polls don't look so different, do they? And remember, Ras has a sample that's 3 times bigger than R2K, so their results should be more precise all things being considered.
There are a million different pieces of the poll to tear apart (a fun pass time when procrastinating, I recommend it) but this seems like a very significant one to me. The gap in partisan ID may be the big one - and finding out who's asking the right question will go a long way towards telling us whether or not the Shy Tories are going to give us four more years on November 4th.