Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large. Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process.
The Vice Presidential debate on Thursday night attracted a bigger television audience than the Presidential debate a week earlier, but is not likely to have much of an impact on the results of Election 2008.
Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."
Voters still had mixed feelings about the $700-billion financial rescue plan as it worked its torturous way through Congress last week, but for Republicans the country’s current economic mess is proving to be more and more of a drag at the polls.
She passed. He passed. Palin fared better going against Joe Biden than Katie Couric.
For all the Republicans' complaints about Gwen Ifill, the moderator's questions were softballs compared to what Sarah Palin faced from Katie Couric. Ifill did not demand that Palin list (OK, how about just name more than one?) Supreme Court decisions. She did not push on the issue of foreign policy experience.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of U.S. voters say Wall Street will benefit more than the average taxpayer from the revised $700-billion economic rescue plan the House is expected to vote on today. Just 22% think the taxpayer will benefit more.
In his first inaugural address, President Ronald Reagan delivered a line succinctly capturing the sentiment that elected him: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
The presidential debate season is just underway. The polls are in flux. The issue agenda--which has already shifted in the last month from the Sarah Palin effect to "lipstick on a pig" to the nation's worst economic crisis since the Depression--may shift again before Election Day.
On the morning after Senate passage of the Treasury rescue bill stocks are down 200 points. So there is no silver bullet to our economic woes.
The Democrats have modestly expanded their lead in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that, if given the choice, 46% of voters would choose their district’s Democratic candidate, while 37% would choose the Republican candidate.
Just over one-third of voters (34%) say tonight’s vice presidential debate is Very Important to how they will vote, and over half (54%) view Joseph Biden as the more skilled debater, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
In September, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans increased a percentage point from 33.2% in August to 34.4% in September.
Accomplished Googlers can probably find the original talking points off which dozens of conservatives made essentially the same case: The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the financial crisis.
The initial failure to pass bailout legislation reflected a political system as bereft of confidence as the financial markets. President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had no credibility to match the arrogance of their initial demand for absolute power in distributing $700 billion of public assistance (the old synonym for welfare).
You know what? Hank Paulson may not be the most powerful financial person in the country right now. That honor goes to Sheila Bair, the chairman of the FDIC.
Who do I blame for this financial disaster? Let me count the villains. Start with President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
There are a few changes to report in the nation's Senate races since we last reviewed them in July-almost all of them in favor of the Democratic candidates. Yet the fundamental outlook hasn't changed terribly much. The Democrats will pick up a fair number of seats to pad their slim 51-to-49 margin. They are defending a mere 12 seats, and all their incumbents are running again. The Republicans have drawn the short straw, trying to protect 23 seats with five incumbents retiring in a tough political environment for the GOP.
What we've all witnessed this week was more than a failure of Wall Street or of Washington, it was a catastrophic failure of branding.
Trailing six points in Rasmussen’s poll, having fallen four points since he suspended his campaign last week, the question for John McCain is: Haven’t you learned anything?
