Chuck Todd, NBC’s political correspondent, is not a big fan of all these new polls showing Romney and Obama to be so close. He’s especially down on Scott Rasmussen who has said that he’s been seeing a close race all along, a result that Todd called “slop.”
Amusingly, during his CNBC Squawkbox appearance back on October 3, Todd seemed to imagine that “spending money” equates to good polling. Several times he adamantly repeated that he and his cohorts at NBC spent a lot of money or spend more money than Rasmussen does on polling. Can you just buy good polling, Mr. Todd?
This week Mr. Rasmussen had a chance to respond to Todd’s taunt on Fox News with host Megyn Kelly.
“Now all these polls are showing what you are showing,” Kelly said to Rasmussen. Despite that, Kelly said, Chuck Todd attacked Rasmussen’s results.
Rasmussen agreed that the current polls are suddenly all showing what he’s been saying all along, that the race is close and could easily go either way in November.
“We’ve been showing this race to be close for a long time. As other polls shift to a likely voters model they’re showing the same thing. Four years ago we showed virtually no change in the final 40 days of the campaign, we’ve shown a steady raise this time. Both men have been within three points of each other for 89 of the last 100 days and we’re happy to compare our work to anybody’s.”
Kelly went on to remind viewers that Rasmussen was hailed as the best pollster of the 2008 election while NBC news ranked in at a lowly 13th place.
Kelly ended slamming Todd. “But what he said was mean, Scott” she said.
“I get used to it after a while. It’s part of the life of being a pollster,” Rasmussen bemusedly replied.
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