Nate Silver, statistician and founder of the highly-respected FiveThirtyEight, today in “Rasmussen Poll on Wisconsin Dispute May Be Biased,” said readers should “disregard” Rasmussen’s poll and “view their work with extreme skepticism going forward.”
Silver, named one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2009, is now published at The New York Times.
The poll in question is one which Rasmussen conducted “on the dispute in Wisconsin between Gov. Scott Walker and some of the state’s public-employee unions.” Silver notes that the poll, “found that 48 percent of respondents agreed more with Mr. Walker in the dispute, while 38 percent agreed more with ‘the union for teachers and other state employees.’â€
Silver calls the questions “problematic,” and explains, “As an analogy, imagine a survey that asked respondents whether they believed the Democrats’ health care overhaul included “death panels†before asking them whether they approved or disapproved of the bill over all.”
Via Twitter, Silver adds, “Not a big fan of partisan polls of any stripe but the AFL-CIO poll on WI at least uses professional question wording,” and “Rasmussen should probably just drop the pretense that they are non-partisan.”
Media Matters adds, “The Huffington Post’s Mark Blumenthal also highlights the flaws in Rasmussen’s latest, noting the poll “appears to lead respondents to a desired result.”
“As we’ve noted many times, Rasmussen’s work often appears to be a weird hybrid of polling and partisan propaganda. The problem is polling is supposed to be a science. Rasmussen treats it more like a sport.”
What is critical to remember is that the Republican party’s pollster of choice is Rasmussen, and every time someone like John Boehner says, “the American people want,” or, “the American people think,” he’s probably relying on a Rasmussen poll, or, well, lying.