With six weeks to go in the 2012 presidential election, the polls look quite good for President Obama. All of the usual caveats still apply -- there's still time, Obama's modest lead is not insurmountable, uncontrollable events are impossible to predict, etc. -- but Mitt Romney and his supporters are understandably discouraged.
Well, at least some of them are. A surprising number of Republicans have decided to go a different route, arguing that all of the evidence pointing to Obama's advantage is wrong.
The Romney campaign and other Republicans say polls showing President Obama with a significant lead over their candidate are inaccurate.
They argue many mainstream polls skew in Obama's favor because of sample sizes that base 2012 turnout projections on 2008, when Democrats -- and Hispanics, blacks and young voters in particular -- turned out in record numbers.
"I don't think [the polls] reflect the composition of what 2012 is going to look like," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said in an interview.
Frustration that polls are skewed in favor of Obama has escalated among some on the right in recent weeks. One website,www.unskewedpolls.com, recently began re-weighting the mainstream polls to closer track the demographic assumptions of conservative polling outlet Rasmussen Reports. The re-weighted polls all show Romney ahead in the race, with leads of between 3 and 11 percentage points.
So, every national poll released over the last several weeks -- literally, all of them -- show Obama leading Romney. Unsatisfied with these results, the right has decided to fiddle with the figures, and wouldn't you know it, the new-and-improved polls all show Romney leading Obama.
It's not just random cranks (see Morris, Dick) arguing all of the polls are unreliable; this idea is repeated widely in Republican circles.
There are three main problems to this line of thought: (1) there's no reason to think the polls are skewed; (2) even the Romney campaign doesn't seriously believe the polls are wrong; and (3) epistemic closure is probably helping poll denialism.
Let's take these one at a time. First, pollsters realize their livelihoods are predicated on getting the best possible results, and the notion that every major news organization is deliberately publishing bogus poll results is pretty silly.
Not every Republican pollster finds fault with the publicly-available surveys. Dan Judy, vice president of North Star Opinion Research in Alexandria, Va., told National Journal, "A lot of the media organizations this cycle seem to have gotten better."
"Most of the media polls are good, professional polls," Judy added, "in terms of making sure that the way their samples are constructed are fairly consistent."
Second, we know Republicans, in their heart of hearts, don't seriously believe the polls are skewed against them. If they did, Republicans would be feeling very optimistic about Romney's chances, and clearly, they're not. On the contrary, GOP officeholders, candidates, and pundits seem quite dispirited with 42 days to go.
Indeed, if internal Republican polling, which presumably wouldn't be part of the larger conspiracy, showed Romney with a consistent lead, he and his campaign wouldn't feel the need to constantly reboot itself with new messages. Just the opposite is true -- if they were confident they're winning, Team Romney wouldn't see the need to change course at all.
And yet, the only consistency to the Republican campaign right now is how inconsistent it is, constantly trying new messages, attacks, and themes, hoping to find one that might stick.
And finally, it's worth appreciating why the right is having this reaction to all of the recent polls. I suspect epistemic closure has a lot to do with it. Remember, for many Republicans, it's extremely easy to avoid objective information -- they can read a conservative newspaper in the morning, listen to conservative talk radio during the day, come home and watch Fox News before going to bed.
These folks have very clear, preconceived ideas, which are rarely challenged. They know, with certainty, that President Obama is the single worst president in American history, whose every move has failed miserably in every possible way.
And so when every national poll shows Obama winning, it's gut-check time -- they can either believe Obama's political standing is fairly strong or they can believe there's a grand conspiracy involving rascally news organizations and biased pollsters. Take a wild guess which option is winning.
We're talking about voters who are accustomed to being told what they want to hear, with every passing day reinforcing those beliefs with more evidence of how right they are. Is it any wonder they see polls challenging their assumptions, and reflexively assume the polls must be wrong?
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This seems to be a polite way of saying "We're going to keep them from voting."
By the way, has there been any news about the touchscreen voting machines? Has that issue been resolved, or are hacked vote machines going to quietly steal the election?
Yeah, it was quaint when George H.W. Bush expressed an oddly insulated certitude of his winning the election in 1992 when he was clearly losing toward the end. Denial and all that.
But what's going on now is in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, you just have to wonder, "Do they know something we don't know?" Are super-mega-gazillionaires just assuming the "fix" is in, or are they operationally deluded about the idea that there are things in this world that can't be bought, no matter how much wampum is thrown at it?
Outright voter disenfranchisement on a scale that would be required to turn things for Romney could potentially generate widespread civic unrest, not to mention broad accusations of an (attempted) coup. The freaky old idea of hacking electronic voting procedures is dependent also on a vote being close, as what I hear is the hacked machines simply count up and down repeatedly, to not only tilt the results in a particular direction, but to also keep the results necessarily close, to head off challenges.
Even so, the exit poll people caved far too easily in 2004. Discrepancies in results across different methods need to be fully investigated.
Also, the emotional-business neediness for television media for a "clear winner" on election night needs to be fully curbed. TV talking heads need to understand that the world and the republic will not end without a clear winner on election night.
That kind of voting machine hacking requires a close election. When the people voting with their feet are overwhelmingly tilted to one side, an opposite result WILL be challenged as an attempted coup.
This current phrase "epistemic closure" used to describe the conservative media bubble is also something I offered an explanation for in the conclusion of my dissertation, as the "paradox of insularity and interactivity." I've been predicting its appearance (and ultimate downfall) since the early growth of the Internet in the mid-1990s.
Ultimately, the cognitive dissonance of holding an extended set of interdependent and unsupportable viewpoints creates tension and a reality disjuncture. Nothing like a massive reality check to pierce that bubble.
Silly dems are counting the votes that will be suppressed.
Very good point to keep in mind!
Another point to keep in mind is that Republicans never thought of disenfranchising women as a class. Voter suppression will almost certainly steal a lot of votes from the Democrats, but the 'war on women' will cost Republicans themselves a lot of votes as well. Will that be enough to make up for the loss to Democrats? We'll be finding out soon enough.
This concerns me because the Republican's succeeded in discrediting exist polling by saying that the polls were all wrong when they won, but actually the polls were correct and they had swung the election. They may be foreshadowing an event that the are going to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The good thing about Newhouse's reweighted polling is that it may motivate all those people in the skewed voting blocs to actually turn up to vote in 2012; as if the results of them staying home in 2010 would not be enough motivation.....
Of course with millions of likely Democratic voters being disenfranchised by the myriad of voter suppression laws Republicans have put in place, maybe they think the polls don't reflect that fact that they think its "In the bag", because "The fix is in".
Daniel Kim has a point. Do any of the pollsters' calculations of "likely voters" include the likely effects of voter ID laws?
That would be impossible to do, given that there's no actual empirical evidence to tell us how those laws will actually affect the vote, no way to poll whether people actually have (as opposed to think they have) the right id, and great uncertainty about whether the courts will let the two states that have such laws that matter enforce them.
Frankly, I don't think they're going to affect the outcome in Pennsylvania. At worst, it will only reduce Obama's margin. The campaign has been vigorously working that problem since the law was passed. Florida? It could be a BFD or not. No idea.
I was watching Faux Nooze last night and they had 100 electoral votes up for grabs with a virtual tie.
Only in a Faux faux world
Not only Fox. Real Clear Politics also shows a map with 100 toss-up electoral votes (though Obama needing only 23 of those 100). In general, I have been disappointed this election cycle with RCP, which seems to be leaning to the right both with its poll analyses and pundit choices. Nate Silver is now my go-to guy.
The irony is that the Republicans are so-o "concerned" over possible voter fraud (at least in the swing states where if "You ain't white? You ain't votin') that they overlook the fact that they are committing fraud themselves by passing state legistation to prevent voter fraud where none statistically exists - in full violation of Constitutional law.
There's a third position here, outside of the overt political left-right spectrum, that has a vested interest in a close horse race election: corporate mainstream media.
When elections are close, ratings are up, just like with close football games, uncertain landfall paths of hurricanes, anything that allows endless speculation and results that could go one way or the other.
They gotta keep us in suspense. It's like TV 101.
Damn Right . What do you think we're running here a news organization?
We've got pharmaceuticals,Cheerios and Tide to sell.
The freepers are going nuts with this. It's probably the only reason they haven't activated their doom bunkers (aside from their rascals not fitting down the hatch).
In their minds, sites like unskewedpolls.com are the beacons showing the truth behind the Romney +7 reality. Its really quite incredible how on the one hand they say Rasmussen is reliable, and on the other how even those polls are inaccurate.
One thing is certain: on Nov 7 there will be a gnashing of teeth and a flowing of tears most profound. I'm still working on a collection system for harvesting those precious baubles; I think a chik-fil-a bun might work best.
Watching their heads explode on November 7 is going to be wonderful.
Chik-fil-a bun! Precious baubles. LOL!
If someone can believe that every news source other than Fox is biased, it's not surprising they could believe that every pollster but Rasmussen is, too. That's pretty much the meaning of epistemic closure -- you get your information from sources that tell you not to trust any other source.
I find it interesting that republicans bet on the bad economy being an albatross around the President's neck. However, I think the american voters have observed the disgusting behavior of congress and are holding them accountable as well. I believe this is playing a role as to why historically a poor economy usually means a bad result in the election. If they gave Obama his agenda and then the results were bad, they would have something. But, since they didn't, these are the results that they are seeing.
This is absolutely true. It seems that everyone knows someone who's lost their home because their job got kicked overseas during the last year of Bush. THEIR priority is to get back to work---but Mitch McConnell has said that his single over-riding concern is that "Barack Obama be a one-term president," so jobs aren't going to come back anytime soon. My friend wants his job back and sees no reason why a Republican leader is actively trying to screw him. He is taking OUR TAX MONEY that pays his salary, to actively work AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE and he wonders why Barack Obama is NOT going to lose this election and why REPUBLICANS are going to not only lose Congress but lose the Senate as well, and why President Obama will get a second term. Hey Mitch! The answer to all three questions is this: American People don't like BULLIES and FRAUDS like yourself, and they're heartily SICK of you Republican fools, and even more so, the Dictatorship that obtained right here in the USA from 2000 right up to 2008, shows that our vaunted 'two-party system' does NOT protect us from a Dictatorship...not when one party turns to crimes against the state (improperly racing to 'purge' voters---all Democrats---from voter rolls!!?) Republicans have to start going to jail for their crimes against their fellow Americans. Our Republic itself is at stake. THAT'S what WE'RE concerned about. It sure seems as though America works best when it's only Democrats in charge. All that Republicans know how to do, is to LIE LIKE RUGS and point fingers (falsely as it turns out) about WHY THERE ARE NO JOBS. They're trying to get rid of President Obama, THAT'S WHY! And mortgaging America's future to do it! Republicans are not people who are anything but disgusting rotten crooks, and the sooner that they are OUT OF OUR BODY POLITIC, THE BETTER OFF AMERICA AND AMERICANS, WILL BE! I can't WAIT until November! Oh---take your ballots with you people. Don't DARE toss them until the recounts are over. How do I know that there will have to be recounts? Trust me and listen to the Republicans. Meanwhile, take your ballots to the news organization of your choice and have them VERIFY your ballot, so that the Republicans can't claim that you didn't vote. KEEP YOUR BALLOTS, people! I have a feeling that Public Recounts are not far away. The old Republican saw about "we cannot wait to re-count votes, America needs a President NOW!" is laughable if it wasn't so pathetic an attempt to commit their oh-so-visible Voter Suppression (which of course, equals Republican Voter Fraud).
Think of the situation had the Congressional Republicans decided to act as a 'loyal opposition'. Had they made it clear they were voting FOR some of the President's proposals in order to try out those proposals--even though they had reservations about them--and the economy had STILL come out sluggish...they'd have an airtight case for hanging the economy around the President's neck.
As it is, Blake's and jvaljon's comments pertain and the republicans have to face the fact that they are as complicit in the state of the economy, since they made sure NOTHING was done to address it. That strategy of obstruction just cannot be the 'dominant' strategy, when the American people have any memory and intelligence left.
It's always nice to read a comment that speaks one's mind exactly. (Not an uncommon occurrence here.) jvaljon1, you spoke my mind EXACTLY. Thanks.
I understand that some court (nothing in the way of identifying which court and which judges) told Fox, that it doesn't have to tell the truth in its news reporting. I wish you'd look it up, Rachel; most people wonder what planet Fox thinks it's reporting from, as it is. But as to news being accurate, that's important. Otherwise it's not news, it's gossip: and if you pay money (either on TV OR just buying a daily paper) to receive accurate news, and you do not receive accurate news---if a news organization is told by a judge that it's OK to 'make up' news---it seems to me that these news organizations have been told that it's OK to commit fraud, (selling wishful thinking and unvetted lies as 'truth' is fraudulent since people pay money to learn what's accurate and what it not. I hope that you get into this, Rachel. It seems that you're the only one dissecting these issues!
Nothing in US Law requires a news organization to report true facts. That, unfortunately, is a true fact.
Canada law, on the contrary, requires news organizations to report only true facts. That is why FOX and Murdoch have been unable to expand into that country. They tried again this year, with considerable support from the ultra-conservatives in their government . . . but were yet again sent packing. Many stories were published on the issue by other news organizations just a few months ago.
This concerns me a lot. The Republicans discredited exit polling during the 2000 election when it turned out the polling was correct, but the had swung the election. They may be making another self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'm also concerned that it may support the stealing of the election.
Duh Cons will cite the polls when they support their position, condemn the polls, often the same pollster, when the results counter their position.
And if I hear "the only poll that matters is November 6th" one more time, I may cough up my breakfast.
I think they have to do this. As odd as it sounds, you cannot look bad going into the debates with these numbers. They will use every tactic they have to spin and make the numbers look good. Obama does have a lot of work to do, and must keep an edge in order to pull this out. The issue is what will Mitt say during the debates and what does he say after them, or says incorrectly that will give Obama an edge. Sorry to say it, but Mitt is his own worst enemy lately.-The question is not really when, but what will he say?
The RW bubble is one of the main reasons Romney is trailing.
He seems to think that his ridiculous attacks (apology tour, "you didn't build that", etc) have the same resonance outside of that bubble. It has been a gross miscalculation.
The thing that concerns me most about this latest tendency towards poll denialism is I believe it's going to light a fire under the push for voter suppression laws. Like Steve said, these people KNOW Obama is the worst president ever, and they KNOW everyone else also thinks the same thing, and they KNOW the polls are wrong, so if Obama then turns around and wins, the ONLY "reasonable" explanation in their minds is going to be massive, widespread voter fraud, which will have to be clamped down on hard before the mid-term elections. This idea frankly scares me to death.
And that's exactly why those tea-publicans that are up for re-election need to be voted out also! Today's repubiCon party needs to be dismissed for their opposition to real democracy!
This looks like the next anti-logical step in the GOP's construction of alternative reality. If they can make things up to attack the president at will, why not just make up polling data to support their belief system?
After they lose the election we can expect them to use the fake poll data to start conspiracy theories that the election was stolen by the Anti-Christ.
but which anti-christ, the black man or the Mormon? :)
Hey Pat, if they claim the anti-Christ stole the election they have forgotten the anti-Christ will side with those that lie, and that is clearly why he would be on their side.
The next anti-logical step in the GOP's construction of alternative reality is Apartheid.
Because their alternative reality has an alternative math where the white male patriarchy isn't a slowly vanishing species.
You just gotta define those other skin tones as non-people and disenfranchise them, and then Apartheid Nation has a permanent majority.
Sort of like the Romans did with non-citizens.
The Romney campaign and it's surrogates can't throw in the towel. They have to say something. So they spin. They question the polls and claim that the "real numbers" show the race is winnable. This is no different than any other election.
What counts at this point is donations. Even billionaires don't want to waste money backing a lost cause. I expect the September numbers won't look good for Mitt.
One thing in this piece for which I take umbrage: if pollsters - if ALL pollsters - truly cared about accuracy, Rasmussen wouldn't exist in its' current state.
If the high up muckety mucks in the GOP have no issue creating their own realities, and weaving NEW realities while we are left behind, judiciously, if you will, trying to untangle the deceptions in their PREVIOUS realities, then who's to say they WOULD have a problem creating a polling outfit where every outcome they'd like to see occur miraculously occurs?
If we live in a post-truth world, then clearly the right can create pollsters to prove the narratives they're driving in order to DISPROVE what the other pollsters are saying, which could serve to color people's perceptions of reality and get them on their side, at which point the reality they wanted to create is created because enough people already believe it.
Alice, meet rabbit hole, I know you'll have SO much to talk about.
There are polls and then there are polls. The polls we see are the polls commissioned by news organizations and propaganda shops. They shade the way the pollster thinks the news organization wants them to shade. Most organizations want tight elections so they are shaded to result in tight races. The campaigns have their own pollsters, and we don't see their internal polls. Those are the ones I want to see, because those are the ones that are the most accurate. I can assure you that Team Romney is seeing exactly what Team Obama is seeing and both are allocating resources accordingly.
Right now even the news organization polls show an Obama victory. That can't happen yet because Team Romney wants to generate as much money as it can from the billionaire and millionaire rubes. They have to regigger the results to demonstrate a Romney victory, otherwise their big donors might take their money and go home.
When you can discredit science without shame, what's discrediting silly political race polls?
This is just Republicans knowing they need to keep the testosterone levels of the Useful Idiots at war levels and if they don't, they fear it's over for the Lyin' Sack of Mitt. Who knows, maybe it could work to keep the Obama supporters from getting overconfident, which is a concern.
Let's not pretend it's only Republicans who isolate themselves. It's a human tendency, blocking out anything that contradicts your opinions. It's just extremely easy to find it among Republicans these days.
Interesting point.
I try to base my opinions on facts. There is a big difference between having an opinion based on feelings and what other people believe versus having an opinion based on facts.
There are probably a lot of Demos that have opinions based on feelings.
But it is easy to find it among Rebuplicans these days, opinions that contradict the facts.
If you want to base your opinions on facts, you would be well advised not to pay much attention to any particular poll and to look long and hard at (1) every poll's internals and (2) how the pollster weights his results.
The best advice I ever heard on polls was that of Willie Brown, the smartest politician I ever met: run like you're ten points down regardless of what the polls say.
Very true Ron. I do not consider polls to represent the facts.
Polls are statistics trying to predict the future.
And to back up your 1st point, from the story about Ralph Reed,
One small reason not to take polls or results from surveys to seriously. :)
I sure hope the democrats make sure these voting computers that count ballots are honest and accurate. I highly suspect voter fraud by republicans by rigging these computers in their favor as I suspected in the recall election of Scott Walker by the exit polls that were conducted. And it sounds by this article that their getting us and themselves prepared for another round of a fixed election and to not be surprised if Romney actually wins even tho all the polls show us different.
Can we keep our ballots? Each voter's individual voter's number is right there on top of the ballot. Make a recount that much easier.
they've prayed so *of course* the polls have to be wrong. or it means their god isn't doing its job.
After Michael Crichton on global warming and Ayn Rand on economics, the only thing that surprises me is that they couldn't find a big name novelist to push this theme.
That explains it in a nutshell.
Four years ago, though I only did it once, I remember responding to one of many e-mails making false claims against Obama. I used Snopes to debunk the e-mails claims.
I was surprised that my parents' friends immediately attacked Snopes as a left wing organization. I knew then that there was going to be a problem with this presidency.
When about a third of the population cannot accept information that they do not agree with, how can we act together?
@Dumbo Jones: I agree wholeheartedly that a large proportion of the U.S. population cannot accept information they do not agree with. There appear to be many more voters in this election cycle than usual who think with their egos and are therefore so blinded they cannot see any side to an issue other than their own. That is why we see so much ANGER being spewed out all over the place - on Facebook, the airwaves, and even in the print media. The best way to make a decision, any decision, my father told me, is to look at both sides of the issue, try on the other point of view for a few days, act the part, read about the other perspective, feel the perspective, (watch Fox news and listen to Rush Limbaugh if you have to), believe your viewpoint is their viewpoint for a while, immerse yourself in that way of thinking. Only then can you make a truly informed decision. Which is the most efficient way of thinking? Which is the most kind and most loving? Which way of thinking takes into consideration the welfare of the most individuals? Which way of thinking feels right? Which is the most reasonable stance? It seems to me that a lot of Republicans in this election are knee-jerk thinkers and have not considered both sides of the issues. Look at the political issues presented at both conventions: (generally speaking) the Republicans tried to persuade with emotions; the Dems tried to persuade with the facts. There is a saying around the courthouse which, as a trial attorney, I know to be true: if you have a good case, argue with the facts. If you have a bad case, argue with the emotions.
the truly sick part of this is that they think the polls should reflect their election day success of suppressing voting among minorities and the elderly. Really? These "great Americans have no qualms about undermining the very basis of our democracy because they feel entitled. They believe only Republicans should be allowed to govern.