Anyone with even a small familiarity of polls knows that Rasmussen Reports polls are outliers in favor of the right wing. It’s almost as if they do it deliberately to skew the polling picture.
For some reason, FiveThirtyEight.com has included Rasmussen polls in its coverage. Now, with FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver about to leave and ABC News taking over the site, it looks like the network has had it with the pollster. ABC sent a detailed list of questions about Rasmussen’s practices with a demand for quick answers if Rasmussen wants to remain in ABC’s coverage.
Unless Rasmussen can come up with some very good explanations for its practices, it will likely be gone from ABC before Donald Trump’s next indictments. Raw Story reported that ABC’s demand for information, dated Thursday, June 29, gave Rasmussen to the “end of day” on Friday to either reply or indicate “an intent to speedily reply” to avoid being banned by the network.
In fact, ABC News already seems out of patience with Rasmussen. Its email to the pollster states:
A pollster at Rasmussen Reports (preferably you) needs to reply to this email with satisfactory comments in order to avoid the ban. To be sure, response alone is not guaranteed to end in the avoidance of a ban; our concerns run much deeper than simple failure to reply to methodological queries — which, for what it's worth, is itself grounds for a ban, and on which we have already given Rasmussen substantial leeway.
ABC’s questions seem totes legit and necessary. First, ABC said “Rasmussen must explain the nature of its relationship with several right-leaning blogs and online media outlets, which have given us reason to doubt the ethical operation of the polling firm.” That includes Fox News and “Steve Bannon’s War Room. Also, “Do Rasmussen's pollsters work with anyone from these organizations on topics to consider polling, despite listing polls as un-sponsored or sponsored by other groups? Does the pollster have a close personal relationship with any of these figures that might cloud their judgement in the operation of a public poll?”
Samples of some of the technical questions:
A survey purportedly finding most Arizona voters believe election “irregularities” affected the outcome of the 2022 election, “seems to indicate that Rasmussen’s weighting targets or sampling strategies are not well-tuned, since the outcome of the poll does not match the observable election result. How are you addressing that methodological problem?”
The methodology mentions you weight by "age, race, gender, political party, and other factors." What are the other factors?
The methodology mentions a "demographically diverse panel" for online respondents. Is this panel proprietary, or are you contracting it out? If the former, how do you recruit and ensure balanced representation on the panel? If the latter, to whom are you contracting out?
Not surprisingly, Rasmussen is playing the victim. It published what it says is the complete text of ABC’s email in a post titled, “ABC News: 'Answer Our Questions -- Or Else!'”
But here’s the thing Rasmussen can’t skew: corporate news outlets have the right to set their journalistic standards - a right I’m sure Rasmussen applauds when it comes to Fox or its other right-wing cronies.
And, by the way, I didn't see any complaint about the questions being unfair or improper.
It's long overdue for these folks to be outed and dismissed as the propagandists they are.
