Rasmussen busted!

Busted! Na na na na na na na na na na! Busted! Na na na na na na na na na na! (Sung to the tune of the 'Batman' theme.)

We've made much of the fact that polls by Rasmussen Reports are outliers: They show things to be significantly more Republican than other pollsters show them. So naturally, the media has taken to rarely quoting any pollster but Rasmussen - in an effort to create a bandwagon effect for the GOP.

I suspected that maybe Rasmussen was using a faulty or outdated party sample.

Well, now the lid has been blown off the Rasmussen secret. A statement on the pollster's website says that Scott Rasmussen "maintains his independence and has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office." But that is categorically false. It turns out that Rasmussen was doing polling on behalf of the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign in the 2004 cycle.

Maybe from now on we should just discard any Raspublican poll unless it's a survey only of those within a given party. From now on, I plan to ignore every Rasmussen poll that claims to be of a general election.

(Source: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/putting-r-in-rasmussen.html)