August 10, 2010

Rasmussen Data

I've been watching Rasmussen's Obama Approval Index and his Rasmussen overall approval since his term as President. I like Rasmussen's methodologies.  I trust his methodologies, but I'm left wondering one thing.

These are Obama's latest Rasmussen poll results from today;

 

The results are a spike back towards the more normal trend line.  I mentioned on Twitter that the weekends seem to provide positive changes for Obama, and then Monday and Tuesday bring approval numbers back into line with the rest of the trend.  Is that reflective of a polling methodology that might create some 'weekend noise' in poll results?  I don't know.  I don't have access to Rasmussen's data.

I do favor his polling of likely voters versus registered voters.  Back in the 2008 election, Gallup - supposedly the gold standard of polling, released two different polling numbers based on two models because they weren't sure how Obama would affect turnout.  Talk about hedging your bets.  Rasmussen has been consistent.

That weekend bounce for Obama surely isn't just my imagination.  Well, maybe it is.  IF it isn't what exactly does that tell us about anything?  I don't have an answer but I'd love to know.  I have a couple of theories but they don't count and I can't back them up so I won't go into the details.  But here's a thought to consider - maybe the results truly do shift in Obama's favor on weekends and back to reality by Tuesday.  If that's the case, the Democrats have a problem since voting takes place on a Tuesday.

2 comments:

  1. Rasmussen always has him lower, but their trend is not constant. I like to average the poll. If you do this you will find a trend of gradual constant decline.

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  2. Certainly if you do any sort of regression analysis trending the lines point downward. I'm just cutrious as to why the daily fluctuations tend to trend positive for Obama on weekends and negative on week days.

    It could be merely my anecdotal observations are leading me to believe that, because I haven't compiled his daily numbers to test my notion.

    The downward trend though is indisputable.

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