Rasmussen Reports

Rasmussen Reports is an American polling company founded in 2003. The company engages in political commentary and the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information. Rasmussen Reports conducts nightly tracking, at national and state levels, of elections, politics, current events, consumer confidence, business topics, and the United States president's job approval ratings. Surveys by the company are conducted using a combination of automated public opinion polling involving pre-recorded telephone inquiries and an online survey. The company generates revenue by selling advertising and subscriptions to its polling survey data. For the 2020 United States presidential election, Rasmussen Reports' final White House Watch survey of likely U.S. voters showed Democrat Joe Biden with a 1% lead over Republican Donald Trump, stating that "President Trump and Democrat Joe Biden are in a near tie." Ultimately, Biden won the election by 4.5 percentage points. In 2018, Rasmussen Reports predicted that Republicans would win the generic ballot by 1 percentage point while the actual election results had Democrats winning by nearly 9 percentage points. This error of nearly 10 percentage points was the largest polling error out of major firms who polled the national generic ballot. Rasmussen pushed back against critics after their miss, saying "the midterm result was relatively poor for Democrats compared to other midterms". History Rasmussen Reports was founded in 2003 by Scott Rasmussen, who served as the company's president from its founding until July 2013, when he left to found the digital media company Styrk. Rasmussen founded his first polling company in 1994. That company, Rasmussen Research, was bought by TownPagesNet.com for about $4.5 million in ordinary shares in 1999. Starting in 1999, Rasmussen's poll was called Portrait of America. In 2003, Rasmussen founded Rasmussen Reports, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey. In August 2009, The Washington Post reported that Rasmussen Reports had received a “major growth capital investment.” New Jersey Business magazine reported that the company increased the size of its staff later that year.