Public Option Polling Is Puzzling

I am not Nate Silver. I won't pretend to understand polling practices, how questions are formulated, or how the data is used to either prove or disprove a particular point of view. But, one thing I do know is that polls only show how people view a specific subject at one point in time and DO NOT dictate how people will act. However, in the modern age, certain subsets of people do base their action around polling data. These people completely lack the ability to think for themselves, and I can only hope that it is a small grouping of the public.

But my question is this: How can different pollsters pose questions about one particular subject and get such massively divergent favorable and non favorable numbers.

Case in point, Quinnipiac shows a plurality of people approve of a public option in healthcare reform.

However, when the same topic is tackled by Rasmussen, the numbers tell a different story.

So the question stands, how can we trust one number versus another?