Rasmussen daily tracking 31 July 2007

[Bradley in DC]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/presidential_tracking_poll

In the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson remains nominally on top with support from 26% of Likely Republican Primary voters. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani remains essentially even as the top choice for 24%. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain are each preferred by 12% (see daily history). Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is favored by 4%, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback attracts support from 3%, and four other candidates (Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Tommy Thompson, and Sam Brownback) split 2% of the vote. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.
Data released today shows that Thompson is the only candidate Republican voters are more likely to see as conservative rather than moderate or liberal.
The latest Rasmussen Reports analysis suggests that Hillary Clinton is the Default Candidate for the Democrats. The biggest danger for the GOP may be that none of the candidates will measure up to the hopes and expectations of the party faithful.
The Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily, Monday through Friday. New results are posted each day by noon Eastern.
The first Rasmussen Reports general election polling for Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich shows him trailing the GOP frontrunner. Last week, match-up results were released for long-shot Republican hopeful Ron Paul.
While they are trailing in the race for the Democratic nomination, both Obama and Edwards have opened larger leads over the Republican frontrunners in general election match-ups. New data matching Clinton against Giuliani and Thompson will be released later this week. See summary of general election match-ups and other data for all Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates.
Americans are divided on the question of whether the next President should meet with the leaders of nations such as Syria, Iraq, and North Korea. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama addressed that topic in different ways during the last debate but public awareness of the distinction is fairly modest. That is probably due to limited public interest in the debates--just 15% of Americans find the debates exciting while 58% say they are boring.
For updates on other topics in the news, visit the Rasmussen Reports home page.
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 750-800 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
General election match-ups, favorability ratings, and ideological perceptions are regularly updated for all Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. Also, favorability rating are updated regularly key Members of Congress, Journalists and Other Political Figures.

 

[james1844]

darn, less than 2% of the vote...we've got some work to do...

 

[foofighter20x]

I still say these polls are BS.

Someone pointed out that it's still an indication of how far we have to go yet, but I say such a conclusion is inaccurate--for now.

Why?

The only people included in these polls are the set-in-their-ways variety. They won't come around until they see that they can't beat Dr Paul with their own neo-con candidate.

Once they realize that, and then realize the need to keep the Dems out of the White House, they'll get onboard. But that won't happen until we harvest the support from the independents and crossover Dems.

Thus, these numbers are meaningless. They'll only have meaning after we get a few straw polls under our belt and are getting much closer to the primaries.

 

[cac1963]

Big Bush donors throwing money

at Clinton, bigtime, claiming the GOP has lost its way. What BS.

 

[rg123]

These polls are rigged again anyone get a call? Where are the questions that are part of the interview and more than likely are as fixed as articles that say Ron is a nutjob. Its part of the effort to keep him out no different than the msm allowing Hillary to lie in debates like all republicans support the war. She never took one hit for that comment even though every news agency knows that is a lie. So write them tell them to publish their questions or do not publish anything at all. Provide names and proof they were interviewed at all because I do not believe them

 

[Tina]

In order to reduce the inaccuracy between two polls conducted by the same pollster, vote multipliers are added, which can be based on earlier polls, prior elections, "scientific" analyzes or just simply guesses. Here is how they work. Let's say that a vote multiplier for Rudy Giuliani is 1.2, for John McCain 1.5 and for Ron Paul –3.0. If the pure poll gives Giuliani 25%, McCain 10% and Ron Paul 10% of the vote, the opinion polls are counted to show 30% for Giuliani, 15% for McCain and only 3% for Ron Paul. The chances are that opinion polls for Ron Paul have negative multipliers, since no-one conducting the polls believes that he can win. The same phenomenon has happened in various European countries during the last five years when so-called far right parties (with anti-immigration, anti-EU and fiscal conservative views) have taken many land-slide victories, even if their results in opinion polls have been often either poor or mediocre.

Opinion polls are not value free or interest neutral. Even if the opinion polling company would want to conduct a poll on honest scientific standards, they still know that their poll has been ordered by USA Today, NBC, FOX News, the Washington Post or the New York Times. So a polling company's self-interest is to produce a result that the mainstream media likes. These news agencies are not interested in polls that predict a great result for Ron Paul, if they would get one, they would not publish it. This can be seen by just looking back at the polling results from as late as late April. During late April most polls did not even include Ron Paul as a potential running candidate! He only starts to show up regularly after mid-May, where as undeclared 'candidate' Fred Thompson has been included since the very beginning.



Opinion polls often lie, just like statistics do. The opinion polling for the Republican primary clearly underestimates Ron Paul's real popularity, which may already be around 10%. For example, sportsbook.com (a betting site – not a pro–Ron Paul site) currently places his odds 5th in the Republican candidate nomination race and 9th in the 2008 Presidential Elections. But let's suppose that I am wrong and the opinion polls do show the real support for Ron Paul. Still, his chances for winning are very good, for the following reasons.



more at link
http://www.ronpaulonline.com/content/view/116/197/

 

[dseisner]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/presidential_tracking_poll

Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
General election match-ups, favorability ratings, and ideological perceptions are regularly updated for all Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. Also, favorability rating are updated regularly key Members of Congress, Journalists and Other Political Figures.

This should say all you need to know about this "scientific polling." Favoribility ratings are a way of cheating and are updated by biased people. RP could EASILY be at 10% with better favoribility ratings a 4% error bumb based on the way they sample (land lines).