Bravo Rasmussen Poll! How Did We Do?

Rasmussen Reports ^

[WilliamReading]

The final Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll showed Barack Obama leading John McCain 52% to 46%.

As of 6:30 a.m. Eastern, the actual returns showed Obama leading McCain 52% to 46%.

Down the stretch, the race was remarkably stable. Rasmussen Reports showed Obama receiving either between 50% of the vote and 52% for the last 40 days of Election 2008. The ranged tightened a bit during the final two weeks--Obama received either 51% or 52% of the vote on 13 of the last 14 days.

For McCain, the numbers stayed between 44% and 47% of the vote for the final forty days of the campaign. He was at 46% or 47% of the vote every day for the final nine days of the tracking poll.

[WilliamReading]

The sad thing is “what might have been.” If Lehman Brothers hadn’t gone bankrupt and Bush’s call for a bailout hadn’t happened, McCain-Palin would have won.

McCain was up 5 points until that hit.

[WilliamReading]

Yes, and a lot of people on this board are still cheering how the moderate Republicans in the Northeast (they call them RINOs) have all been replaced by more liberal Democrats.

They are what I would call the Kool-Aid drinkers.

[LadyNavyVet]

Rasmussen got something else right, too. His final party ID number was +6.5 for the Dems. According to preliminary numbers from the NES, the official year-long National Election Survey, party ID yesterday was +6 for the Dems.

[floridagopvoter]

I have learned over time to believe in the AGGREGATE of ALL polls. Put ALL polls in the hat, regardless whether they look good or bad for our side. Then tally them all up and divide by the number of polls measured. More often than not you get your final result, basically eliminating margin of error.

While Rasmussen was right on with their popular vote count, their individual state polls weren’t as good (i.e. Pennsylvania.) But, look at the aggregate tally from some of the aggregation sites like RCP or pollster.com, and you get an incredibly close picture to what ended up happening. Take pollster.com actual vs. predicted as an example:

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/actual_vs_predicted_electoral.php

Maybe this and 2006 can serve as a lesson for many here. Come 2010 take ALL polls, good and bad (chances are some are too far in our corner, some are too far in theirs) and average them out to come up with the most likely result (barring any major external crisis or event.)

That attitude hurt us in some meaningful ways. For instance, Pennsylvania was never close, and anecdotals “proving” that Obama actually had no chance to win the state, despite what the polls were showing us, were maddening, and potentially damaging to our chances. McCain obviously started drinking the kool-aid about Pennsylvania, too. He sunk a ton of money (about 1/4th of his ad budget for most of October) and time into a state that looked FURTHER away from us than Michigan, but polls were to be shunned, not believed. Ignore them, the whole lot of them. Meanwhile Virginia, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina lacked those funds and were allowed to flip. Huge, huge blunder, based on blind reliance on the myth that ALL polls are inherently false or have a partisan agenda, that has been too prevalent on our side and had even found its way into the campaign. The end result: 55% to 44%.

Also, look at 2004. The one poll closest to the end result was the aggregate of them all, see for yourself:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html

Don’t shun ALL polls. Don’t believe whacked out polls too generous to their side, but also don’t JUST believe those closest to our side (chances are they are too generous to us.) Take them ALL and use the average.