I was lucky (?) enough to pick up the phone Monday evening to receive a poll from Rasmussen. Results from this poll can be found here.
Not having access to the "platinum page" for members only (I'm only a member of Colbert Platinum, and not Rasmussen Platinum), I can't see the full results page that perhaps lists the full set of questions. The page I linked above provides only a brief subset of the full set of questions they asked me. If you just looked at that page you might get the idea that the questions on that page are the entire set of poll questions, but there was quite a bit more to it than that.
This was a push button poll - in other words, there was no live human voice on the other end of the line; I had to push 1, 2, 3 etc for my responses rather than giving them orally.
In addition to the fairly neutral sounding questions that are listed on the page I linked above, the questions included items like:
Are government workers overpaid? Press 1 for yes, and 2 for no.
Should people be required to vote to approve any increase in federal taxes? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.
Should any change to Social Security be subject to a vote of the people? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.
(I may have the wording of the questions slightly wrong since I didn't write them down at the time, so these are to the best of my memory.)
You'll notice that these items don't, for example, include the question "Are CEOs overpaid? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no."
Both Whitman and Fiorina were first in the questioning about who I would vote for in November, even though they are both alphabetically later than their opponents. It is possible that they scramble the order, I don't know, but I got the Republicans first.
Given the kinds of questions they asked in addition to the overall, more neutral sounding ones, I'm not surprised that they come up with more conservative numbers than other polling organizations. Right now they have Fiorina at 48 to Boxer's 47 based on those poll results, and Whitman at 48 to Brown's 45.
Wikipedia has some commentary on their poll wording as well.
Rasmussen has received criticism over the wording in its polls.[22] Examples of Rasmussen's questions with wording issues include:
* Agree or Disagree: "Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. He says jump, and they say how high."[23]
* Do you favor or oppose the economic recovery package proposed by Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats?[24]
* Suppose that Democrats agreed on a health care reform bill that is opposed by all Republicans in Congress. Should the Democrats pass that bill or should they change the bill to win support from a reasonable number of Republicans?[25]
* Do you agree or disagree with the following statement... it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money?[25]
The items listed in Wikipedia are fairly representative of the kinds of questions that were included in the poll I received.
I did my part to answer, but based on what I heard on the phone, I'm not surprised Rasmussen's results are out of line with those of other polls.