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Rasmussen sez: “108% of Respondents Say . . .”

- November 4, 2010

Jeff pointed me to “this”:http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/tJkhip1KLmo/-Rasmussen-Being-Rasmussen:-The-Evidence-Is-In discussion, which reminded me of a story from a couple years ago that perhaps is still relevant . . .

I was looking up the governors’ popularity numbers on the web, and came across this page from Rasmussen Reports which shows Sarah Palin as the 3rd-most-popular governor. But then I looked more carefully. Janet Napolitano of Arizona was viewed as Excellent by 28% of respondents, Good by 27%, Fair by 26%, and Poor by 27%. That adds up to 108%! What’s going on?

I’d think they would have a computer program to pipe the survey results directly into the spreadsheet. But I guess not, someone must be typing in these numbers one at a time. Another possibility is that they are altering their numbers by hand, and someone made a mistake with the Napolitano numbers, adding a few percent in one place and forgetting to subtract elsewhere. Or maybe there’s another explanation?