Who is Rasmussen?

Rush, and other talk show hosts such as Sean Hannity, frequently mention "the polls" and how Obama and other politicals are doing in them.

I myself place no credence in polls. Pollsters talk to 1,000 people, no more, and from this they extrapolate the will of a country of millions? And who do they talk to? Most people have caller ID and dont' respond to phone polls...so what types of people do pollsters get when they reach someone on the phone?

Anyway, here is information on Rasmussen polls.

Rasmussen Reports [not to be confused with Rasmussen Report] is an American media company that publishes and distributes information based on public opinion polling. Founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen in 2003, the company updates daily indexes including the President's job approval rating, and provides public opinion data, analysis, and commentary, along with coverage of business, economic, and lifestyle issues. The company claims to have the "most comprehensive public opinion data" and uses the slogan, "If it's in the news, it's in our polls".

History
Scott Rasmussen founded the polling company, GrassRoots Research, in 1995. His company, Rasmussen Research, was bought by TownPagesNet.com for about $4.5 million in ordinary shares in 1999. In 2003, Rasmussen founded Rasmussen Reports, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey; he is currently the president of the company.

Rasmussen Reports polls make use of automated public opinion polling, involving pre-recorded telephone inquiries. These types of polls are believed to produce results at low cost, although some traditional pollsters are skeptical of this methodology and prefer traditional, operator-assisted polling techniques. In addition to political polling, Rasmussen provides public opinion data, analysis, and commentary, along with coverage of business, economic, and lifestyle issues. He describes himself as a market driven public opinion pollster.

Use
Polls by Rasmussen Reports are cited regularly by multiple major news sources, and Rasmussen has appeared as a guest analyst on a number of news broadcasts, including the Fox News Channel, the BBC, CNN, NPR, and CNBC.

However, MSNBC does not use Rasmussen polls.

Conversely, conservative media frequently refers to Rasmussen, praising them for being the first to ask about a relevant issue or to ask questions that other pollsters do not. For example, the anti-war organization After Downing Street commissioned a Rasmussen poll on support, or lack thereof, for the impeachment of President Bush.

Ranking
Slate Magazine and The Wall Street Journal reported that Rasmussen Reports was one of the most accurate polling firms for the 2004 United States presidential election and 2006 United States general elections. In 2004 Slate magazine "publicly doubted and privately derided" Rasmussen's use of recorded voices in electoral polls. However, after the election, they concluded that Rasmussen’s polls were among the most accurate in the 2004 presidential election. According to Politico, Rasmussen's 2008 presidential-election polls "closely mirrored the election's outcome".

Near the end of the 2008 Presidential Election, progressive statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed eight national presidential tracking polls. Silver concluded that while none was perfect, "Rasmussen – with its large sample size and high pollster rating – would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island." By 2010, however, Silver's view of Rasmussen had changed. In an analysis posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on April 17, 2010, Silver concluded that since the end of the 2008 election cycle, Rasmussen's "house effect" was skewing its polling numbers and that "to believe that Rasmussen is getting it right: you also have to believe that almost everyone else is getting it wrong." Silver also disputed Rasmussen's suggestion that difference between his results and those of other polls can be explained by Rasmussen polling only "likely voters" rather than all adults.

Criticism
TIME has described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group". The Center For Public Integrity has pointed out that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign. According to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, while there are no apparent records of Scott Rasmussen or Rasmussen Reports making contributions to political candidates and its public election polls are generally regarded as reliable, "some observers have questioned its issue-based polling, which frequently tends to elicit responses that are more conservative than those found on other national surveys."

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented on their reliability in a February 2009 article:

The toplines tend to be a bit toward the Republican side of the spectrum, compared to the average of other polls. But if you factor that in they're pretty reliable. And the frequency that Rasmussen is able to turn them around – because they're based on robocalls – gives them added value in terms of teasing out trends. But the qualitative questions, in terms of their phrasing and so forth, are frequently skewed to give answers friendly toward GOP or conservative viewpoints. All of which is to say that his numbers are valuable. But they need to be read with that bias in mind.

Rasmussen has received criticism over the wording in its polls. Examples of Rasmussen's questions with wording issues include:

Agree or Disagree: "Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. He says jump, and they say how high."

Do you favor or oppose the economic recovery package proposed by Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats?

Suppose that Democrats agreed on a health care reform bill that is opposed by all Republicans in Congress. Should the Democrats pass that bill or should they change the bill to win support from a reasonable number of Republicans?

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement... it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money?

Some of Rasmussen polls have contained two different weights for questions, depending on the party of the statesman in the question.

In one example, the first question asks for a job rating for Tim Pawlenty, a Republican governor, using an approve/disapprove scale. The next question asks for the way that Al Franken, a Democratic senator, is performing his role, but uses a Excellent/Good/Fair/Poor scale. Nick Panagakis of Pollster.com has pointed out that, when using the latter scale, "approval is often reported by combining the top two and bottom two scores", including the "fair" score as a "disapproval" vote.

According to Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who co-developed Pollster.com, “He [Rasmussen] polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod." Franklin also said: "It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.