Scott Rasmussen EXCLUSIVE

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade. Scott maintains his independence and has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office. Before turning to polling, Scott grew up in the broadcast business. In 2008, his poll, the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll, was deemed to be the most accurate poll by Fordham University.

I recently had a chance to pose a few questions to Mr. Rasmussen regarding the election and polling in general.

OS: Mr. Rasmussen, based on many news reports and confirmed through an analysis by Fordham University, you were the most accurate pollster of the 2008 election. Does this give you a sense of vindication since many in both the print and electronic media sometimes doubted your work during the election cycle?

SR: I did not feel a particular need for vindication. In 2004, we were the only firm to project Bush and Kerry’s actual vote total within half a percentage point. Our firm has a fine track record in state and local polling. But, it’s always nice when the results validate our work.

OS: One reason I suspect you were so successful is your unique method of party-weighting. Without giving away any trade secrets, can you briefly describe your method of party-ID weighting?

SR: We collect large volumes of data and use this information to establish targets for how many republicans, democrats, and unaffiliated voters should be in the sample. This eliminates one level of statistical noise that can impact the results.

OS: Obviously when you conduct a poll for an election, you can verify your methods and techniques by looking at the election results. But when you are conducting surveys and polls not related to politics, is there a way to verify that you are getting accurate responses? If so, how?

SR: There are many ways to verify poll results, but the specifics depend upon the poll. For example, when we poll about health care, we always check to make sure that our sample includes an appropriate percentage of people with no health care coverage.

OS: Other pollsters continue to attempt widespread use of internet polling, even though their results are widely divergent from other telephone polls and the actual election results. Is there reason to believe internet polling is the future of the industry?

SR: The industry will change dramatically over the next few years and we will see a lot of experimentation with online polling, text polling, and more. It is all part of the industry’s future.

OS: Lastly, when reviewing your poll results and data collected over the past year of polling, is there a data point that you don't have, or a question you wished you had tracked or asked?

SR: There are a million data points I wish we had! But, there is not one single data point that keeps me awake at night.