My faith in polls are nil . . . NYT, Rasmussen or otherwise. They are all cooked in one way or the other.
polls are reliable in a sense...because they help shape public opinion. A self fulfilling prophecy.
Unfortunately the polls seemed to be right prior to the Presidential elections. I was hoping that they were wrong and couldn’t accurately gauge who was voting for Obama. I was hoping that more would vote against Obama as I was — but — I was sure wrong and those polls turned out to be right in who was elected.
Apparently there is some validity to polls — which goes to show you that the problem is not in the polls, but rather, in the American voting electorate (itself), who voted for Obama.