Another Note on Polling

Alana Goodman has a post up at Commentary today in reaction to a recent Rasmussen poll. In it she asserts that President Obama has manufactured issues to distract from the economy and that this is hurting him with voters. She points out that the most recent Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney up 7%, 50 to 43. Goodman argues that issues like gay marriage are an attempt by the President to divert attention from the struggling economy and Mitt Romney's attempts to brush aside all other issues and focus directly on the economy are working. This, she says, is demonstrated in the polling numbers.

I find this perplexing, although not because of her argument about the issues; it is clearly to Romney's advantage to focus on the economy and Obama must make other arguments while the economy continues to struggle. Rather, I disagree with the polling numbers she chooses to support her theory.

As I have suggested previously, individual polling numbers can be very deceptive. The Rasmussen poll is notoriously inclined toward Republican candidates. While the race between Obama and Romney has unquestionably tightened in recent weeks, every polling aggregate that I have seen shows the President with a lead nationally, albeit a small one. The Rasmussen poll is clearly an outlier. At no point in the piece does Ms. Goodman take note of other polling or aggregate polling averages. Real Clear Politics has the average of seven different polls (including Rasmussen) available at its site; Obama leads Romney by 1.3% in that calculus, 46.7 to 45.4.

Pieces like this, on both the left and the right, seem designed to serve the political inclinations of their readership and do not leave readers more informed.