Could someone help me with polls starting with Rasmussen?

[progressiveforever]

I follow a lot of polls, but they are not always great at declaring their affiliation.

Rasmussen is Fox, right? Or is that not the way it works?

Also, electoral-vote.com? Who operates that?

My favorite, is fivethirtyeight.com, but are they accurate--overly optimistic? I sure hope not because they have some really good news.

Of course, we know which one really matters (that little one on Nov.4), but are there others to pay attention to or disregard?

THanks for any suggestions.

[woolldog]

1. Rasmussen

is a polling company. They do a lot of independent polling. Somtimes Fox will commission them to conduct a poll, in which case the poll will be labeled a "Fox-Rasmussen" poll or vice versa. It's similar to the way Gallup sometimes teams up with USA Today. If it's a legitimate pollster (and Rasmussen and Gallup are legitimate pollsters) their results should not be affected by who commissions the poll.

538 is a great site. Whether you believe the predictions or not, it does collect all the most recent state by state polls for you to look at and it has some good analysis as well.

[progressiveforever]

5. Thanks for setting me straight on Rasmussen

I didn't realize they were on par with Gallup.

[SteppingRazor]

2. Rasmussen is an independent polling company.

If Fox hires it, then it would work for Fox for that particular poll. In fact, most polling companies are independent, though a few work specifically for one political party or another. (For example, PPP is a Democratic polling firm, while POS is a Republican firm).

Electoral-vote.com is just a website run by some guy. He identifies himself as a libertarian who tends to favor Democrats.

fivethirtyeight.com is, similarly, just a site run by some dude. Specifically, a guy named Nate Silver, who's better known for his work in baseball stats. Newsweek profiled him here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/140469


You can find almost all this stuff at the individual web sites.

[plcdude]

3. go here to get a

comprehensive view. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/

[Alhena]

4. I was polled by Rasmussen last night ...

they used a recorded (good for removing any hypothetical Bradley effect) female voice, there was no slant to the questions that I could detect. Seemed to be professionally done.

[barack the house]

6. I think pollster.com nailed it in the primary it's the average of several polls.