Paulapolooza

Rasmussen had shown a particularly large house effect in this race. Whereas the pollster.com trendline of all non-Rasmussen polls had shown Paul ahead by just 1 point, Rasmussen’s trendline had him up by 15, even prior to this poll being released.
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We’ve discussed before how Rasmussen’s polling seems to be especially favorable to tea-party-type candidates. The makeup of the Tea Party is somewhat amorphous and therefore it may be hard to correct for self-selection bias by means of ordinary demographic weighting.
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…. there are things that Rasmussen could do to quell the criticism from here and other quarters. For one thing, they could engage in a more earnest dialog about their methodology. For instance, they’ve said that their use of a likely voter model is the reason for their house effect, but a more careful examination reveals that it doesn’t suffice to explain the discrepancy.

And, as Markos Moulitsas pointed out yesterday, Rasmussen has engaged in a strange disappearing act this year when it was actually time to put their necks on the line and poll races close to election day.