I was struck by this December 30 headline at the Huffington Post: "Only 21 Percent Of U.S. Voters Support Net Neutrality."

Really? Well it turns out the poll was conducted by Scott Rasmussen, whose polling has made him a favorite at Fox News Channel. The real story here is that the poll question was clearly cooked up to achieve the desired outcome. As Amy Lee noted near the bottom of the piece,  Rasmussen asked this question: "Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?"

But the FCC's proposed net neutrality rules do not at all resemble regulation of radio and television, which (among other things) requires station owners obtain a government license to broadcast on the public airwaves. Lee writes that the question "defines net neutrality in a very restricted way." But that's putting it way too kindly. The poll is a fraud, and a familiar one. In 2009 Rasmussen did a survey about the Fairness Doctrine, which was debunked here at the FAIR Blog (2/17/09). Rasmussen asked respondents if "the government should require all radio stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary." The Fairness Doctrine never did any such thing, but conservatives have long argued that it would squelch right-wing talk radio. They've been trying to do something similar with net neutrality, scaring people about a supposed government takeover of the internet.

The Rasmussen poll has been criticized for putting a right-wing skew on its questions--a strategy that helps Scott Rasmussen garner frequent appearances on Fox News and the like, but severely diminishes its usefulness as a guide to public opinion.

The latest example of Rasmussen's tilt is particularly tendentious: "How important is it to you that the dollar remain the currency of the United States?" the pollster asked (3/29-30/09), finding 70 percent saying it was "very important" and 88 percent saying at least "somewhat important."

Needless to say, there are no plans to replace the dollar as the currency of the United States--what there is, however, is China's suggestion that a new currency be created for international trading purposes, and an attempt by some on the right (notably Rep. Michele Bachmann) to scare people into thinking that the New World Order is coming to take their dollars away.

The striking thing is that Rasmussen appears to know there are no such plans. "I was really curious where the suspicion level was going to be on this particular question," he told Talking Points Memo (4/31/09). "If the idea got around that this meant replacing the currency in your wallet," he added, "then absolutely there would be support building for protecting the dollar." He seems to be saying that he was testing out how people would respond to misleading scare tactics--and, in the process, furthering those scare tactics himself.