Now Rasmussen is fudging the numbers. Can we trust any of these fuckers?

[Truth2Tell]

First http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Truth2Tell/211">Zogby jumped the shark. Now http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9479">Chris Bowers alerts us to the fact that Rasmussen seems to be tweaking their own numbers to show a closer race:

Tue Oct 28, 2008 at 16:45

This will probably cause me to lose my subscriber account to Rasmussen, but there is a major discrepancy in the internals of the Rasmussen tracking poll today that I have to point out. Simply put, no matter how I work the number, Obama has a larger lead than the 51%-46% http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll">published on their website today.

Here is the problem:

The partisan weighting targets for the Rasmussen tracking poll are currently 40.0% Democratic, 32.8% Republican, and 27.2% Other.

According to the subscriber page on Rasmussen's website, the partisan internals for the Rasmussen tracking poll are currently as follows:

Democrats: Obama 88%--11% McCain
Republicans: McCain 87%-10% Obama
Other: Obama 50%-44% McCain

If these partisan weights are combined with these partisan internals, the result is Obama 52.1%--44.9%, or 52%-45% instead of the current 51%-46%. McCain. Even if all the partisan weighting and partisan internal numbers were rounded as favorably to Obama as possible on the subsriber page, Obama still leads 51.54%--45.43%, which is still 52%-45%.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9479">Continued here.

See Chris' math http://www.openleft.com/upload/Rasmussen_October_28.pdf">here.

You think maybe someone wants this race to be close?

[pokercat999]

1. They probably think the closer the polls the less likely it is that

America will burn when they steal the election..........I think they're wrong.

[Truth2Tell]

5. I hope you're wrong and that they just like a horserace. Or they

just like neocons.

But you may be right.

[ej510]

2. This is how you manufacture a tight race.

[GrizzlyMan]

3. Uh huh

But what happens on election day when Obama wins by 5-8 pts?

[TxRider]

4. You can never trust the polls..

Especially in a year with so many new voters, so many deeply held issues, and so much new technology making older polling techniques unreliable...

[DrToast]

6. I don't buy this.

There must be something else he's missing. Two days ago Rasmussen had Obama at +8.

He's not fudging the topline numbers. If he was, he'd fudge the internal numbers, too.