538 scorches Rasmussen's WI Senate poll

Predictably Charlie Sykes hawks a Rasmussen poll that shows nigh unknown Republican Senatorial candidate Ron Johnson within two points of Russ Feingold. Sykes goes so far to hail it as a "Ron Johnson bump." (IIRC his producer seemed to have some doubts about its validity -- as he should be, given the goal of Rasmussen's polling seems to be to drive Republican narratives and Rasmussen has a dismal track record in  Wisconsin).

The result is absurd because no one really knows anything about Johnson. And the Brawler suspects, based on George Will's mash note to Johnson, that the great GOP hope is too far right to win in Wisconsin. He's staunchly antiabortion rights, and appears eager to make an issue of that, and he supports Paul Ryan's Road Map to Ruin even as other Republicans recognize it's political poison. He'll be easy to paint as an extremist -- because he is an extremist.

Polling ace Nate Silver at 538 takes aim at the absurdity of the poll -- though notes that it is always possible Johnson could win -- and uses it to call out the problematic nature of Rasmussen's polling, noting Rasmussen accounts for an "outright majority" of weird polls. 

This afternoon, we got an interesting example of that. Rasmussen released a pollsuggesting that Ron Johnson, a businessman from Oshkosh, is running just 2 points behind Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold in Wisconsin's Senate race.

Have you ever heard of Ron Johnson? I hadn't until about three days ago. And it seems unlikely that many voters in the Badger State would have heard about him either. Johnson didn't announce his candidacy until two weeks ago. He's never held political office before. He runs a small business called Pacur Inc that has only 73 employees. He doesn't have a campaign website up. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page. Prior to this morning, he'd beenmentioned in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the state's largest paper, just three times over the past month.

And yet, according to Rasmussen, 68 percent of Wisconsin's "likely voters" have already formulated an opinion about Ron Johnson! And 94 percent of the state's voters know how they'd vote if he were to run against Russ Feingold!

Comments

[pete]

wow, your not bias at ALL!

[John Foust]

To inspire more confidence, perhaps they could design a survey to determine the fraction who can correctly identify Ron Johnson...

Is Ron Johnson:

A. A character in a recent Will Ferrell movie
B. A candidate for Senate, running against Feingold
C. Heir to the S.C. Johnson Wax fortune
D. None of the above

Meanwhile, over at Boots and Kittens, Wendy wonders aloud if Johnson has any substance, and if so, will he project it on her.

[Ronald Zahn]

Apparently the people of Wisconsin would vote for an unknown rather than a candidate whom they know does not represent their aspirations and beliefs. What's there to doubt here? The people are saying loudly and clearly, "Give us anybody but not Feingold!"

[Jake formerly of the LP]

You gotta love Rasmussen's cop-out of a "likely voter" technique. In the case of Wisconsin, for example, Ras's likely voter lives in the 262 and has a landline. And Feingold still leads that push-poll....

Seriously, the dude is paid by Faux News to provide polls, which then are reported to drive a narrative for lazy media to follow. His Obama approval levels are 10 points below the combined average of everyone else, and he is 20 POINTS different than anyone else with Rand Paul in Kentucky.

Bottom line, when looking at the Ras poll and then adjusting 10 points for reality's liberal bias, it means Feingold is up 12 on Johnson, Barrett up 3 on Walker, and 8 on Neumann. Sounds about right, and Walker and Johnson won't be capable of gaining any voters once the rest of the state figures out how they roll.

[Guy Thompto]

Who is Russ Feingold? As I recall, he has one infamous piece of legislation attached to his name - one that has been whittled down to spit in the ocean - but has done little else in his gazillion years in the US Senate.

WHO IS RUSS FEINGOLD AND WHY IS HE RUNNING FOR OFFICE?

[Scott]

This is funny, because PPP (a liberal leaning pollster) shows the race as a statistical dead heat as well 45%-43%.