Friday, December 11, 2009
When Pundits Compare Apples To Oranges: One Look at Health Care Polling
Trying to compare or match one poll against another is pretty futile...
Scott Rasmussen explains:
"A blog entry posted at CQPolitics.com looked at a recent Rasmussen Reports poll and another by the Kaiser Family Foundation and concluded that the 'new polls disagree on whether a government overhaul of the nation's health care system will leave people better off or worse off.'
In fact, according to the posting, the results were dramatically different with the Rasmussen poll showing that people think the system would be worse by a 54% to 20% margin 'while the Kaiser poll says the country as a whole would do better, 54 percent to 27 percent.' The post concluded that the polls 'do not provide much in the way of clues that might explain the discrepancy..'
Stories like these are frustrating and are used by some to raise doubts about the entire field of polling. At Rasmussen Reports, when we see a discrepancy like that, we seek to understand why."
