Pollster Scott Rasmussen emails this reply to our earlier post noting his results seemed to be out of line with other pollsters.
I am fascinated with those who see a big difference between our Job Approval polling and other polls. In fact, there is no significant difference.
For a Democratic President, polls of all adults are typically going to show results about 3-5 points higher than polls of Likely Voters. That's because some segments of the population that lean heavily Democratic are typically less likely to vote than others (i.e.--adults under 30). If you look back at a comparison of Rasmussen Reports daily tracking of Likely Voters with Gallup's daily tracking of Adults, you see the same broad trends and most of the time a gap in that 3-5 point range.
Due to statistical noise, there are times when the gap is bigger and other times when it is non-existent. There have even been times when our Likely Voter sample showed a point-or-two higher than Gallup. But, those are the exceptions.
It's also worth noting that our polls tend to show less volatility than other polls. During Election 2008, our polls consistently showed Barack Obama with essentially the same lead every single day for the final six weeks of the campaign.
By the way, the same logic applies to other polls. A week ago, a Washington Post survey of adults found that 45% favor the health care bill working its way through Congress. At that time, we found 42% support (our new weekly update shows 45%, but the range has been steady between 41% and 46% since July).
