I should note that in 2010, Rasmussen's polling consistently showed a considerable Republican bias as noted by Nate Silver who blogs about survey methodology and statistics over at The New York Times. Read his analysis here. That said, I have less of a reason to believe that any bias--should it remain in Rasmussen's methodology during this election cycle--is reflective in THESE results given that they show us pretty much what we've seen since March of 2011: the race is...too close to call.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
New poll--but same story in the Montana Senate Race
Montana Republicans and the Rehberg campaign are touting a poll showing their man leading in the Montana Senate race. The poll was done by Rasmussen and shows Congressman Rehberg with 47% of the vote and Senator Tester with 44%. The poll was of 500 likely Montana voters conducted on February 22, 2012. The margin of error is 4.5 percent, so really, the race is too close to call. I generally do not like to say a candidate is in the lead unless the candidate has a lead outside the margin of error. You can read about the particulars here.
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The difference of 3% is within the 4.5% margin of error, but there's a strong probability that Rehberg is ahead. See http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014294.php
Great comment, James. Thanks--I found the article fascinating. So, eyeballing the chart, there's about a 75% chance Rehberg is indeed ahead. The one thing I'm curious to know--and this is important--is how Rasmussen defines a likely voter in their model...
I have a couple of observations to make about this polls and polls in general.
1) I think it likely that polling this election cycle will be prone to more error than in previous cycles. This is due to the large number of people that have decided to self identify as independant (or without party). This number is higher than ever in history and is probably due to the rancor and dissatisfaction with the current rhetoric in politics.
2) Due to this political shift, I think it likely that polling data will be skewed because the people likely to make the call (those in the middle) are not sure themselves what they are going to do at this point. Given this number is larger than before, even the error margins are probably larger than the pollsters think they are.
Last, I would like to point out that Senator Tester was consistanly behind in the polls the year he was first elected. In the primary, most polling sources had him behind Morrison. In the General, most pollsters showed him behind Burns - sometimes by a significant amount.
Thanks for the comment, Moorcat--I especially appreciate the historical context.
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