Unlikely Voter

New York Magazine was trying to be sympathetic to the popular polling figures on its own side of the political, but let out a secret in the process: Public Policy Polling cooked the books all along.

The New York Times’ Nate Silver is now going after Rasmussen Reports again. After the primaries he said Rasmussen was in his crosshairs for ducking out on a number of races by not polling primaries.

According to Silver’s own chart though, Rasmussen polled twice as often as the second place firm, and is still Silver’s primary target. Funny that.

Nate Silver at the New York Times suggested yesterday that generic ballot polling might underestimate how well the Democrats will do in November.

Henry Olson at NRO countered by describing how it might shade the other way.

I think it’s the best tool we’ve got, and partisan bias is somewhere in the middle. Here’s why.

So 538 moved to the New York Times this morning and in the process made Marco Rubio the favorite finally.

But seriously, my issue with Nate Silver today comes from the old site and specifically, his primary night commentary.

I’m not the only one who’s been skeptical of Nate Silver’s dogged attacks on Rasmussen Reports, demanding that they open up their secret sauce just because the firm’s results are less favorable to his preferred political party than other pollsters’ results are.

Mark Blumenthal is on the case, esposing what is fundamentally a hypocritical position by Silver and his site, fivethirtyeight.com.

Daily Kos has dropped Research 2000 as the site pollster going forward, citing Nate Silver’s poor marks for the firm’s results. I’m glad of this.

Are we tired of Pennsylvania yet? Of course not! Specifically we now check in on the Governor’s race. Rasmussen has released the first poll since the primary, but I will compare that with the last pre-primary Quinnipiac poll anyway. Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato were obvious likely nominees.

I believe we have as much to learn about Rasmussen’s distinctive modeling as we do about the race itself.

Research 2000 very much wants you to know that they do polls for newspapers in St. Louis, Lexington, Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Reno. They don’t want you to think of them primarily as doing polls for left-wing activist outlets Daily Kos and now Democracy for America, the group founded to continue the work of former Presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Someone should tell Daily Kos and Nate Silver this though, as they beat the wardrums against R2k competitor Rasmussen Reports, that R2k is trying to look less partisan, not more.

Welcome to Unlikely Voter! A plain summary of what this site is about can be seen in the About page, but I’ll now share the human side of that.