ABC will ban Rasmussen from their average of polls because he was on Bannon’s show and Fox. Fox is moving left, so it’s hard to believe that’s a problem, especially since the pollster Mark Mitchell hasn’t been on Fox.
My name is Elliott Morris, and I am the Editorial Director of Data Analytics at ABC News. I am responsible for our editorial analysis of polls, election results, and other data, including the output at ABC’s FiveThirtyEight.
I am emailing you to send a final notice that FiveThirtyEight is considering formally banning Rasmussen Reports from its coverage. Such a ban would result in being removed from listing on our main polls page and being excluded from all of our aggregation and election forecasting models. If banned, Rasmussen Reports would also be removed from our historical averages of polls and from our pollster ratings. Your surveys would no longer appear in reporting, and we would write an article explaining our reasons for the ban.
From there, Morris makes it clear that he has to explain his relationship with Bannon and Fox. He wants to know if there is a close personal relationship or if they have a professional influence.
They want more information on his methodology. Morris said it looks like his phone surveys are to the same people each time. Then he commented on the samplings not being well-tuned. There is a lot more you can read on this link.
Morris ordered him to reply by yesterday. The tone of the letter and the demands are rude at best.
If he is eliminating him because he dislikes his friends, it sounds Stalinesque.
At this moment, it sounds political. It’s ridiculous that ABC is pretending to be so ethical and accurate given the fact that they are very biased. They have Clinton apparatchik George Stephanopoulos in the top spots. They lean everything left. However, this is a new guy who doesn’t come bearing ABC’s peccadillos. However, Morris did work for the far-left Economist.
Leftist groups are likely after them to eliminate the pollster who might lean right. That’s just my personal opinion. They can’t control Rasmussen.
Moreover, Morris, who follows Nate Silver, claims dealing with Rasmussen is a long time coming. We’ll post his story when it comes out with Mitchell’s response. It sounds like Morris has his mind made up, but who knows? On the other hand, he could just be doing his job. We will give him the benefit of the doubt but hope he will do something to improve ABC’s shoddy polls while he’s at it.