Republican Poll Numbers- Liberals Don't Get It
There has been great mirth today, by liberals and in the mainstream press, at a trend that has developed in the last couple of days, of a number of Republicans attacking the national polls and claiming that they are heavily biased to show Obama leading. This has, as usual, been attributed to psychological malaise and inability to accept reality on the right.
Here are a couple of examples:
From Greg Sargent, at the Washington Post:
"The Romney campaign is joining the ranks of supporters who have decided that major national polls show Romney losing only because the samples are overly weighted with Dems. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse insists that public polling averages are “skewed,” and that the 2012 electorate will not show the same minority and Dem base composition as the 2008 one did.
But in an interview with me, Obama campaign pollster Joel Benenson mocked the idea that the electorate will diverge meaningfully from that of 2008 as as delusional.
“The notion that this electorate isn’t going to be as diverse as it was is frankly a fantasy,” Benenson said."
And from Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly:
"There are really only three ways to deal with all the evidence that Obama is ahead with time beginning to run out: (1) blame it on a bad Romney campaign; (2) argue some 1980-style “big shift” to Romney is inevitable and perhaps already baked into the cake; or (3) just deny it all on grounds most of the pollsters are wrong, biased or both.
Unsurprisingly, this last approach is wildly popular at the moment (Kirsanow mentions it as a possibility). It even has its own Prophet, a man named Dean Chambers who spends his time recalculating everybody’s horse-race polls and approval/disapproval numbers based on what they’d look like if they used Rasmussen’s Party ID weighting."
Now, if you are interested, here are some of Dean Chambers' "recalculations:"
I have not seen anyone else say this, but I am going to assert positively that this sort of thing is not a fantasy, nor the result of the right's inability to accept reality, as great as that is.
This behavior is intended to provide a synthetic track record to cover the vast efforts at voter disenfranchisement which, at this point, represent the Republicans' only real shot at winning this election. Remember that the Republicans are "challenging" 750,000 Democratic voters in Ohio alone, where they have also distributed a million copies of a sick DVD by swift boat liar Jerome Corsi, filled with lies about Obama being a Communist plant. And similar efforts are underway in many battleground States.
If they are able to steal the Presidential election through anti-American tactics like this, they are going to need to explain how the supposed final vote tallies varied so far from the vast majority of polls. These ludicrous, phony polling results will then be their trump card, reducing, in the minds of many, what should be clear evidence of fraud, to a he said- she said squabble. They are covering their tracks in advance. Though Obama seems to be strengthening his lead every day, Republican vote suppression may still very well give the election to Romney, in which case they will be ready to muddy the waters as they steal the Presidency for the second time in twelve years.
Here are a couple of examples:
From Greg Sargent, at the Washington Post:
"The Romney campaign is joining the ranks of supporters who have decided that major national polls show Romney losing only because the samples are overly weighted with Dems. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse insists that public polling averages are “skewed,” and that the 2012 electorate will not show the same minority and Dem base composition as the 2008 one did.
But in an interview with me, Obama campaign pollster Joel Benenson mocked the idea that the electorate will diverge meaningfully from that of 2008 as as delusional.
“The notion that this electorate isn’t going to be as diverse as it was is frankly a fantasy,” Benenson said."
And from Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly:
"There are really only three ways to deal with all the evidence that Obama is ahead with time beginning to run out: (1) blame it on a bad Romney campaign; (2) argue some 1980-style “big shift” to Romney is inevitable and perhaps already baked into the cake; or (3) just deny it all on grounds most of the pollsters are wrong, biased or both.
Unsurprisingly, this last approach is wildly popular at the moment (Kirsanow mentions it as a possibility). It even has its own Prophet, a man named Dean Chambers who spends his time recalculating everybody’s horse-race polls and approval/disapproval numbers based on what they’d look like if they used Rasmussen’s Party ID weighting."
Now, if you are interested, here are some of Dean Chambers' "recalculations:"
This behavior is intended to provide a synthetic track record to cover the vast efforts at voter disenfranchisement which, at this point, represent the Republicans' only real shot at winning this election. Remember that the Republicans are "challenging" 750,000 Democratic voters in Ohio alone, where they have also distributed a million copies of a sick DVD by swift boat liar Jerome Corsi, filled with lies about Obama being a Communist plant. And similar efforts are underway in many battleground States.
If they are able to steal the Presidential election through anti-American tactics like this, they are going to need to explain how the supposed final vote tallies varied so far from the vast majority of polls. These ludicrous, phony polling results will then be their trump card, reducing, in the minds of many, what should be clear evidence of fraud, to a he said- she said squabble. They are covering their tracks in advance. Though Obama seems to be strengthening his lead every day, Republican vote suppression may still very well give the election to Romney, in which case they will be ready to muddy the waters as they steal the Presidency for the second time in twelve years.
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