The Method To Rasmussen's Madness

Now, I give Rasmussen a hard time, I think their Presidential approval number polls are heavily skewed against Obama.  The fact they are so far off from the majority of other polls has begun to bother them somewhat (not to mention being constantly called out on it) but as TPMDC's Eric Kleefield points out, even Rasmussen's curious as to why.

Rasmussen has released a new set of polls illustrating how the exact questioning of a poll can subtly affect the answers -- and perhaps explaining why their own daily survey puts President Obama's approval lower than nearly everyone else.
Respondents were asked their approval of Obama using Rasmussen's usual format: Do they strongly approve, somewhat approval, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove? The answer here is 47% approval, with 28% strongly approving, to 52% disapproval, including 41% who strongly disapprove.

However, Rasmussen got a different result when they asked the question as a simple "approve" or "disapprove." Obama then enters positive territory at 50% approval, 46% disapproval -- in line with a lot of other polls, such as the Gallup survey.

Now that's quite curious...but as I keep mentioning, Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index ignores everyone who doesn't have a strong opinion either way.  It's completely the strongly approve versus the strongly disapprove, and that has had Obama deeply in the negatives for basically all of his Presidency so far.
I've called this discrepancy the ODI -- the Obama Derangement Index.  I've been tracking it since late July, and this set of Rasmussen polls shows what I've been saying for months now:  Rasmussen goes out of its way to make Obama look bad.

Indeed, 50% to 46% gives Obama a +4 in Rasmussen's book, but using their method, he's at -13.  There's something lousy going on there.