Rasmussen & Trafalgar are both crap polls (
Computer
Responsive
Automated
Polling), as well as another sense of crap. Automated telephone polls, no human interaction. They both are republican pollsters and pad to the right.
When trump was pres, rasmussen padded his approval numbers by 6 to 8 pts above the rest of the field average. While Biden's been president, rasmussen has counter padded his approval by 8 to 10 pts lower. This is corroborated by nate silver's 538 poll website, which includes rasmussen in its presidential approval poll average, but anti-biases rasmussen, currently by 8 pts.
Real Clear Politics (RCP) also has a presidential approval poll average, but does not ant-bias pollster results, it lists all polls at face value, including rasmussen which skews the poll to the right consistently.
Here is the mar 04, 2022 rasmussen poll from '538' pollsters: :
Rasmussen 1,500LV 42% .. 55% ///
adjusted:-44% .. 49%
Note rasmussen's face value 42% approval for Biden, with 55% dissapproval; so 55 - 42 = - 13 net difference. Note the
adjusted value which '538' assigns as 44% approval to 49% disapproval, for a -5 net difference. So rather than -13 net disapproval, 538 adjusts rasmussen to only -5 disapproval, which is what is included in their daily poll average. On the RCP polling average, the -13 net diff is what they include for rasmussen. Biden bashing rasmussen padded 8 pts to biden's disapproval, according to 538's historical analysis of rasmussen (note: even tho other reputable polls currently have bidens' net approval ratings worse than rasmussens, is because rasmussen strategically pads to try to
appear reputable when other pollsters are showing poor results for dems).
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?ex_cid=rrpromo
Here's the mar 04 2022 marist poll which showed an 8 pt biden bump after sotu address:
Marist: 47% appr ... 50% disapproval /// adjusted 48% .. 50%
Marist has a -3 net disapproval for biden, which 538 anti-biased by 1 (marist leaned 1 to R, actually pretty fair pollster) to 48 to 50 for an adjusted net diff of -2.
The adjusted net difference is what 538 includes in it's presidential poll averages. RCP includes face value, which allows crappy pollsters like rasmussen and trafalgar and harris (R) to cheat and skew RCP average to the right, by about 1 or 2 pts better for republican and worse for democrats in the poll average (since there are usually a dozen or so polls in the polling average, it doesn't reflect as a larger comparative difference thanks for that anyway)
-----------------------
Rasmussen also is included in EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL POLL done by 538 and RCP. That is because rasmussen is a tracking poll and posts a (padded) presidential poll result every working day as it averages a rolling 3 day track.
Most reputable pplls post a presidential approval poll
only once a month, like pew, gallup, quinn, nbc, cbs, abc and yes fox in this case. However, the daily RCP and 538 polling average only includes polls within a drop-back period of approx 18 days, wherein if the poll is older than 18 days it is no longer included in the polling average. Thus more reputable polls are excluded after 18 days and are not included almost half the time, while the padding rasmussen is included EVERY SINGLE POLL.
Since 538 'adjusts', it compensates, but Real Clear Politics (RCP) does not adjust or anti-bias and allows it's poll to be skewed by rasmussen. That is because real clear politics is better pronounced real queer politics.
Proof: Mar 4 presidential polling avg from '538': 52.4 disappr, 42.6 appr = net 9.8 disapproal
........ Mar 4 pres polling avg Real Clear Politics: 53.5 disappr, 41.6 appr = net 11.9 disapproval
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the rasmussen padding effect.
(both poll averages often are closer & infrequently RCP will even do better for dems, since they might be using different pollsters for that time period, but when the same pollsters are used in the avg, RCP sucks for dems)
Having a bias of 1 or 2 pts is pretty normal. But 8 pts is abnormal. Trafalgar was 5 pts R, there is one pollster 4 D, I forget which.
