Scott Rasmussen - the Latest Enemy of the People

Having failed to make either Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin the number one enemy of the people, the Obama White House and Congressional Democrats have hit upon a new albeit unusual candidate. His name is Scott Rasmussen.

Politico is reporting that the main cause of ire from the Democrats is that the poll that Rasmussen runs has consistently shown a slide in President Barack Obama's popularity and a skyrocketing of the President's unpopularity. Obama supporters accuse Rasmussen of "under polling" Obama. Rasmussen results do tend to be a little less favorable to Obama and Democrats than other polling outfits. Democrats also accuse Rasmussen of framing the questions to get a certain result.

It also likely doesn't help that Rasmussen is often quoted on conservative talk radio such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and that Scott Rasmussen actually appears as a guest on various shows on the Fox News Network. For liberals, that is like presenting a red flag to a bull.

The problem is, Rasmussen has tended to be very accurate in predicting the outcome of various elections. According to Politico:

"Rasmussen is quick to point out the accuracy of his surveys - noting how close his firm was to predicting the final outcome in this fall's New Jersey governor's race. (Rasmussen's final survey in the race showed Republican Chris Christie edging out Gov. Jon Corzine 46 percent to 43 percent. Christie beat Corzine 48 percent to 45 percent on Election Day.) And he argues that he was among the first pollsters to show Obama narrowing the gap with Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

"Last year, the progressive website FiveThirtyEight.com's pollster ratings, based on the 2008 presidential primaries, awarded Rasmussen the third-highest mark for its accuracy in predicting the outcome of the contests. And Rasmussen's final poll of the 2008 general election - showing Obama defeating Arizona Sen. John McCain 52 percent to 46 percent - closely mirrored the election's outcome. "

So why does Rasmussen tend to show that Obama and the Democrats are in worse shape than other polls? According to Politico, Rasmussen has an explanation.

"Rasmussen, for his part, explained that his numbers are trending Republican simply because he is screening for only those voters most likely to head to the polls - a pool of respondents, he argues, that just so happens to bend more conservative this election cycle."

One wonders how attacking a pollster, of all people, is smart politics. The attacks draw attention to the results that the pollster is getting, which is not exactly beneficial to President Obama. Usually the tactic for dealing with bad poll numbers is to dismiss them and, if possible, point to other, more favorable polling. The problem is that most every polling organization is showing bad news for Obama and the Democrats, just a few points less bad than Rasmussen.

Attacking a pollster personally smacks of a kind of growing desperation of a group of politicians who are clearly looking at the political abyss and have no clue what to do about it. Change our radical policies? Pshaw! Clearly it's a plot against the people by Scott Rasmussen and his friends in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Source: Low favorables: Dems rip Rasmussen, Alex Isenstadt, Politico, January 2nd, 2009