Is approval rating really 50 percent? [View all]
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-Large
Updated 12:12 PM ET, Mon April 17, 2017
... There are .. reasons to be skeptical about .. Rasmussen ...
* Rasmussen surveys "likely voters" in their daily approval polls ... The problem .. is that we have no real idea of how Rasmussen decides who a "likely voter" is ...
* Rasmussen used an automated voice (as opposed to a real, live person) to conduct their polls. They are, therefore, barred by law from contacting people on cell phones. People who only use cell phones tend to be younger and more diverse than those who have landlines. And younger, more diverse voters have heavily favored Democrats in recent elections.
* Rasmussen doesn't disclose how they conduct the telephone portion of their surveys. (They also do an online poll as a supplement to their phone results, which is a whole other problem.) Most pollsters use a technique called random digit dialing, which is exactly what it sounds like, to build a representative sample. Others -- particularly partisan pollsters -- poll off a privately maintained voter file ... Which one does Rasmussen use? We don't know if they use either -- or some other way to develop a random sample of the public -- because they don't release details on how they do it ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/17/politics/trump-approval-rating-rasmussen/
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