Why my Rasmussen vote was miscounted – the CT poll released today shows Dick Blumenthal with a 50% share in the race to replace Chris Dodd.
Rasmussen uses computers, not humans to do the poll and I made a mistake on the most important question, but it was a flaw in their polling technique.
The poll was very long and had a series of questions with answers from 1-5 — 1=strongly agree, 3=no opinion, 5=strongly disagree. After a while you punch the number without waiting for the list.
When it got to the impression of Blumenthal, I pressed 5 – I detest everthing he has done since I moved here (fighting the electric cable to NY, suing Big Tobacco, fighting LNG offloading terminal, forcing burial of power lines then opposing recovery of those costs, etc…)
After punching 5 for “strongly dislike”, I realized they changed the answers in the middle – 3 was mildy disapprove, 4 was strongly disapprove and 5 was “no opinion”
Please change my “5” to a “4” 8^P
That is a VERY GOOD example of why I don’t trust polls. They can be engineered in any way to solicite any answer that the pollster or sponsor of the poll wants. Having a degree in Social Psychology I am very familiar with the concept of Social Engineering and using the predictabilty of human behavior to manipulate groups of people.