#rsrh Rasmussen begins to see improvement for Romney, post debate.

Today’s result is 49/47 Obama/Romney (identical to yesterday), but read on:

These results are based upon nightly interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, only about one-third of the interviews for today’s update were conducted after the presidential debate. The single night of polling conducted after the debate did show some improvement for Romney, but it remains to be seen whether that will continue or if it was merely statistical noise. Sunday morning’s update will be the first national polling based entirely upon post-debate interviews.

(Bolding mine) This is why Rasmussen (and Gallup) does rolling averages; to damp out fluctuations.  Personally, I expect to see Thursday’s improvement turn into a bounce, but Rasmussen’s point that one day isn’t a trend is valid.  Good news, in other words, but don’t get complacent.

#rsrh Rasmussen 52/36 Thompson/Baldwin.

Assuming that the poll is correct – or even correct enough – sixteen points is… a pretty comfortable lead.  What may be more of interest is that Rep. Baldwin only gets about 42%-44% against the other Republican candidates; she’s effectively tied with all of them.  This is not good news for the Democrats; they are simply not prepared for an election battlespace where they have to pump money and energy into Wisconsin.

Particularly since these results don’t exist in a vacuum. If Wisconsin is really as in-play as its numbers suggest (and Rasmussen is showing a trend in the WI Presidential race that suggests that it is), then… what about the other states in the area?  The Midwest was exceptionally blue in 2008; but since then the Democratic party’s taken, as they say, an arrow in the knee.  Has everybody calibrated accordingly?

#rsrh QotD, Is This A Trick Question? Edition.

Glenn Reynolds, on noting that the latest Rasmussen poll has Romney beating Obama by a bit:

[T]he perception is that last week was bad for Republicans and good for the Dems because the Dems succeeded in painting the GOP as a bunch of ugly social-cons. What gives?

At a guess?  The disconnect probably is because, outside a few monocultural urban areas (which happen to be also nexus points for our major media entities) being a social conservative is not particularly socially onerous.  It’s part of the fallout from having a population that identifies two-to-one conservative over liberal.

Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

I stopped doing this in the middle of 2010, once it became clear that the real question of 2010 was how many hits to the head with the snake the Democrats were going to take before it was all over.  As the answer was “a lot,” I feel that this was a wise prioritization of my time.

But it’s a new cycle, so let’s look at the numbers – both the latest ones, and May’s.  Short version: Republicans are scoring better in nine out of ten topics that Rasmussen charts, and there’s a ten point lead on the economy.  Which, not incidentally, is the most burning issue for Americans these days. Continue reading Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

The August Rasmussen Trust Numbers.

The latest Rasmussen trust numbers are out, after what was an odd formatting thing that made me decide to stop reporting them until things settled down.  Short version: Rasmussen has replaced Abortion with Afghanistan in the top ten category; the GOP won all ten, including that perennial heartbreaker Government Ethics; and the numbers nonetheless show a shift away from July’s numbers, mostly because July’s numbers were uniformly awful for the Democrats. Continue reading The August Rasmussen Trust Numbers.

Rasmussen: Meek must be sunk…

…if the Democrats want to keep the R from the seat. If Meek gets the nomination, Marco Rubio wins; if Greene gets it, Crist picks up enough votes to make the race competitive. And, of course, if Crist wins he’ll then finish the project of becoming a Democrat. That was Arlen Specter’s mistake, you see: openly turning your coat will strike too many people as being too raw. Better by far to lie until after the election, and not give them the chance to complain for six years.

The latest numbers from Rasmussen support this:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Florida shows Rubio with 38% of the vote and Crist at 33% if Congressman Kendrick Meek is the nominee. Meek earns 21%. Only one percent (1%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

If billionaire Jeff Greene is the Democratic candidate, Crist gets 37% support to Rubio’s 36%, with Greene trailing at 20%. two percent (2%) like another candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Continue reading Rasmussen: Meek must be sunk…

Rasmussen: 9% of USA in coma.

I’m frankly impressed that Rasmussen was able to poll them anyway on tax policy. I’ve known for a while that pollsters would dearly love to be able to bypass the brain’s censor circuits and find out what the American voter really thinks; I’m just mildly surprised that research along those lines has paid off so early.  Then again, if you’re in a coma you probably will see a tax decrease, at that – so are they even wrong?

Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters still expect their taxes to increase under President Obama, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just nine percent (9%) think their taxes will go down, and 39% expect them to stay the same.

Better and better, the percentage of people who have made a rational assessment of this administration’s tax policy has risen by a third in just a year and a half (in 2008, only 31% thought that our taxes would go up). Nice to see that we’re having an impact.  Or that the administration’s antics are.  Hard to say, really.

If you drill deeper down, you’ll find that a majority of Mainstream (Rasmussen’s term for ‘normal’) class voters think that their taxes will go up, while a majority of Political (Rasmussen’s term for ‘self-identified elitist’) class voters think that their taxes will stay about the same. Hopefully, this will make you feel better about the 39% generally who expect their taxes to say the same; a large number of them are actually still reachable.  The others… are not.  Don’t worry about it over-much, mostly because there’s no point anyway.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Rasmussen: road to 51 no longer runs through CA/CT.

People are paying a lot of attention to the House right now, but there’s something interesting going on in the Senate. And in some ways it should worry the Democrats more.

Let’s start by taking a look at Rasmussen’s state of the Senate races right now:

U.S. Senate Snapshot:
Held/Solid Democratic 48
Leans Democratic 1
Toss-Up 9
Leans Republican 3
Held/Solid Republican 39

Continue reading Rasmussen: road to 51 no longer runs through CA/CT.

#rsrh What to do with R2000 polls?

The falling-out – and fallout – between Research 2000 and the Daily Kos has been entertaining, and promises to be much so in the future.   The counter-suing has already begun (by the way; every lawyer I know is goggle-eyed at the way that Moulitsas’ attorney has set himself and his client up for a defamation lawsuit, completely independent of the fraud lawsuit), and both sides seem determined to make me cheerfully root for injuries, so this is going to be fun.

But there is a serious question: what do we do about the polls out there now?

DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas is asking poll-trackers to remove from their sites what he calls the “bunk” Research 2000 polls he once sponsored, after he expressed doubt on the accuracy of the company’s numbers. And if poll-trackers comply, some Republicans could see a bump in their poll averages on those sites.

Continue reading #rsrh What to do with R2000 polls?