President Trump’s approval rating reached 51 percent in Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll on Monday, but those results were an outlier compared to other polls that have the president at an average of 42.4 percent, according to RealClearPolitics.
While many might wonder why Rasmussen consistently has Trump higher than other polls, managing editor Fran Coombs defended his company’s methodology on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Monday.
“It’s nonsense,” said Coombs, according to LifeZette. “All these pollsters that these guys like to rely on, as your listeners well know, had disastrous results in 2016. And to the best of our knowledge, I don’t think they’ve really corrected anything at all. So as far as I know, they’re probably still having disastrous results.”
Coombs noted that Rasmussen was the most accurate of the 2016 polling companies because of three key methodologies:
One – Eliminate skewed results by screening out registered voters who are unlikely to vote.
Two – Rasmussen tracks daily using a 1,500 person sample, but adds 500 and drops 500 on a regular basis.
Three – The use of “robo-calling,” which allows respondents to talk to a machine instead of a real person.
Coombs told Ingraham that respondents “are more likely to tell the truth to an anonymous machine” in today’s hyper-partisan world.
Other than adding additional cellphone users, Rasmussen essentially polls the same way it has since the Obama presidency, according to the editor.
“In many instances, we had Obama, his favorables, higher than some of the other pollsters did,” said Coombs. “And, of course, they didn’t complain about that.”