August 18, 2008
POLL: Rasmussen Illinois (8/12)
Rasmussen Reports
8/12/08; 500 LV, 4.5%
Mode: IVR
Illinois
Obama 55, McCain 40
(July: Obama 50, McCain 37)
Sen: Durbin (D-i) 61, Sauerberg (R) 33
(July: Durbin 63, Sauerberg 28)
By Eric Dienstfrey on August 18, 2008 5:23 PM | Permalink
Comments
I'm puzzled that they would even poll Illinois. Why waste the resources? Go poll PA and FL.
My guess is that they somehow use state data to map against the data in their national daily polls.
My guess is that Rasmussen publishes polls in order to get headlines and to drown out other pollsters. Actually, that's not a guess.
Rasmussen regularly polls all 50 states for national issue trends as well as the Republican/Democratic/unaffiliated weighting. Also the local issue polling was very interesting.
Why since July has Obama lost 5 points in his home state?
Uhm, KipTin, he actually gained 5 points since then, but I know its easy to miss those silly "facts" when you're a Republican troll and your only point for being here is to drown out rational discussion...
brambster~ Good point. This would especially be salient in influencing groups like pollster and RCP that use several polls to ascertain an average assessment of a race. If Rassmussen has three polls within a certain time frame used by the "compiler" they might have three times the weight as SUSA or Quinnipac, which surveys less frequently.
Perhaps the best thing to do would be to average the results of firms that have several surveys during a measured time-frame and only then use those averages in compiling the results of the "Grand Poll".
Not a big surprise.
The previous poll was likely an outlier.
Kerry won this state 55-45
Posted on August 18, 2008 5:52 PM