Unlikely Voter

So Fox News put out a new poll of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. It’s a typical poll in many ways, but Fox’s bit of analysis got me to thinking: Polls like this favor frontrunners and likely skew the race.

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.

Tommy Thompson was going to give Russ Feingold a tough race, but he decided not to run. How are Republicans doing now to challenge the three term incumbent? Rasmussen has a look.

Rasmussen took a special poll of one particular matchup possibility in the 2012 Presidential race. He looked at Ron Paul against Barack Obama and, surprise, Paul runs very well, trailing the incumbent President 41-42.

How can this be, when Paul was rejected so soundly in the Republican primaries just two years ago? Reading the poll, I’m left to wonder if it was written and paid for by supporters of the Texas Republican.