Clearly Biased Polls Being Sold As Fact To Discourage Voters From Voting For Alison Grimes

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The Rasmussen poll also has Mitch McConnell getting 24% support from Democrats. For the sake of comparison, the insanely biased Fox News poll that had McConnell up by four points has the incumbent getting 12% Democratic support. It is clear that Rasmussen built McConnell’s eight-point advantage in their poll by doubling the Republican’s level of Democratic support.

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The problem with Rasmussen is that they don’t poll cell phone users. Instead of polling cell users, they use an online panel and landline phones to compile their data. The problem with not polling cell phone only users is that the poll leaves out younger voters who are more likely to support Democrats.

It is safe to conclude that the Rasmussen Reports poll of the Kentucky Senate race is another in a string of recent polls from Republican biased pollsters who are trying to discourage Democratic turnout while influencing the polling models. A close examination of the recent data leads to the suspicion that Republican pollsters have increased the level of bias in their polling in order to negate the built in bias subtraction of the polling models. For example, if 538 calculates a four point Republican bias, the pollster responds with a poll that contains a 6-8 point level of bias, so that their favored candidate still leads and the polling result influences the average of all polls.

The Rasmussen poll is a bad poll from a Republican pollster with a history of being inaccurate and wrong. The Senate election in Kentucky is going to be close. The deciding factor will be turnout and the impact of the Grimes ground game. Media members who write a story giving these Republican polls legitimacy are committing journalist malpractice. Members of the media don’t need to be polling experts, but it would be nice if the could tell the difference between a good poll and a bad poll. The Rasmussen poll is a very bad poll.

The numbers can be shaped to lie. Mitch McConnell is a lot closer to losing his seat than he is to leading by eight points.

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