News from the Votemaster

New Feature Starting Today: A Second Map Page without Rasmussen

Nate Silver of the New York Times analyzed a large number of polls and pollsters after the 2010 election and concluded that the polls of Rasmussen Reports, whose subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research is the house pollster for Fox News, were highly inaccurate and strongly biased towards the Republicans. In contrast, PPP, which the media often (incorrectly) label as a "Democratic pollster" were more accurate and actually had a tiny bias toward the Republicans. Many people saw this news story and asked me to not to consider Rasmussen's polls. I have always resisted because in principle, Rasmussen is not a partisan pollster, that is, he doesn't work for candidates as many pollsters do. I don't want to be accused of picking and choosing among pollsters, so I have always included his polls and will continue to do that.

However, as a service to people who don't put much stock in his polls, starting today, the site will have an inside page giving the presidential and Senate maps and scores excluding all of Rasmussen's polls. You can then compare them if you wish. The page today is here but there is a new menu item "Rasmussen-free maps" that will be available every day to get to the current page. From that page you can go back and forth in time, the same way as with the main page and Senate page.

Since this is a data-oriented Website, let's look at the data we have. Rasmussen has run 50 general-election presidential polls this year. He has the Democrat ahead in 26 of them, the Republican ahead in 22, and 2 ties. Here is the data for all the Rasmussen presidential polls this year.

At the campaign progresses and there is more data to examine, we can at least see how he compares to other pollsters. More about Rasmussen here.

Economy Improving Somewhat in the Swing States

While the national economic picture is still poor, the pain is not uniformly distributed around the country. In reality, unemployment in California or Texas is not terribly important for the election because we already know how those states will go. What is more important is the jobs picture in the 10-12 swing states that will decide the election. In seven of those states (Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the unemployment rate is below the national average of 8.2%. In some cases it is way below. In Virginia, a truly crucial state, it is below 6%. While people in those states read about the national average, when they see that their friends, neighbors, and relatives are finding jobs, it will be harder for Mitt Romney to convince them that Obama has failed to get the economy on track. It is crazy and not good public policy, but from Obama's perspective, creating one job in Virginia is worth 10 jobs in Texas. But this is a consequence of the 18th century electoral college and the fact there this not a national election, but 51 state elections.

Obama Visits Colorado to Comfort Victim's Families

President Obama spent Sunday in Colorado acting presidential and talking to the families of the people shot in last week's mass murder. Does this matter? Well, to put things bluntly, Obama knows very well that Colorado is a key swing state. Spending a day there talking to people and showing that he cares while Romney is preparing to go to in London to cavort with the high and mighty. This reinforces the image he wants to project: he cares about ordinary people and Romney doesn't. Obama doesn't have to talk about policies or gun control or anything like that. Just being there is the message itself. Remember how much criticism George W. Bush took for not rushing to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina? Obama understands that just being on the scene of the disaster is enough.

Kerrey Struggling in Nebraska

Vietnam veteran and former Nebraska governor and senator Bob Kerrey is struggling mightily to regain his old place in the Senate. When Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced that he was retiring (in no small part due to all the abuse he was getting from Democrats who accused him of being a DINO), he left a huge gap to be filled. Unless the Democrats could come up with a superstar, they would lose the seat in very red Nebraska. After months and months of pleading, the DSCC convinced Kerrey to go for another hurrah. The Republican nominee is Debra Fischer, a member of Nebraska's unicameral legislature. The most recent poll, a Rasmussen poll taken May 16, puts Fischer ahead 56% to 38%. The poll before that, a PPP poll in late March puts Fischer ahead 48% to 38%, but that poll was before she sealed the nomination. Either way, Kerrey's magic has apparently worn off and the Republicans are on their way to picking up the seat.

Today's Presidential Polls