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This was the week that the political world discovered the burgeoning world of conservative polling denial. Just like other, better-established fields of conservative reality denial, the polling denial movement has its own levels of insanity. At the core sit the most fanatical of the denialists, like unskewedpolls.com, a popular site that offers its own twist on public opinion data, which currently has Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama by 7.8 percent nationally. At the next level out, mainstream conservative pundits echo the denialists without quite following their analysis through to its full obsessive, nutty conclusions. The American Spectator’s Robert Stacy McCain accuses the media of slanting its polls deliberately with “coverage that seem[s] intentionally designed to demoralize Republicans and persuade undecided 'swing' voters — who have a tendency to vote for the candidate they perceive as the likely winner — to support Obama."

The poll denialists’ argument holds that the polls — all of them, except Rasmussen, conducted by a right-wing pundit with a terrible record of accuracy — are over-sampling Democrats, finding nearly as many of them as showed up at the polls in 2008, which they consider a high-water mark for Democrats unlikely to be repeated. Pundits have patiently explained that polls do not make assumptions about the party identification of voters but merely report what voters tell them. And the most plausible explanation for the higher number of Democrats in polls is that increasing numbers of conservatives who reliably vote Republican are identifying themselves as independents to pollsters.

So poll denialism is silly, and the conspiratorial explanation undergirding it is deranged. Still, the reality is not quite as clean and simple as the defenders of polling have made it out to be. The poll denialists' rants contain some slivers of truth in them.

First, polling is a very hard science, and it seems to be getting harder. Response rates have dropped, and larger numbers of Americans use only cell phones. If the difficulties of polling overwhelm the pollsters’ ability to get it right, we’ll know only after it happens. It’s conceivable that somehow the polls are systematically over-counting Democratic voters. (Of course, it’s just as possible they’re systematically over-counting Republicans.)

The broader fear behind poll denialism is also one that ought to be treated with sympathy. Conservatives rage that the media are deliberately fostering the impression that Obama is winning, to discourage Republicans from voting. (The beauty of the conspiracy theory is that it supplies its own excuse for failure: If Obama wins, conservatives can argue that he only won because fake polls depressed the Republican vote.)

A good deal of what undecided voters who are just now tuning in will learn about Romney is that he’s a loser disdained by fellow Republicans. Conservative rage over this fact may be utterly misplaced, but the sentiment itself is perfectly understandable. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/gop-poll-denialists-not-totally-w
rong.html]
I checked out this "unskewedpolls.com", and boy, is it a doozy!

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"How Mitt Romney is actually defeating Barack Obama in the presidential race"

Rasmussen Reports is by far the most accurate among the well-established polling firms. But a series of swing state polls done at the state level by mainstream media outlets reported yesterday and the day before were so heavily skewed that they are raising questions about the credibility of the media outlets and polling firms involved in them.

Activists and partisans on the far left bitterly cling to these skewed polls because they are the only evidence they can cite that shows President Obama can be reelected.... http://www.examiner.com/article/mitt-romney-vs-barack-obama-heavily-sk
ewed-swing-state-polls-1?cid=db_articles]
Catch the "favorites sites" listed on the Unskewedpolls.com website: American Thinker | Freedomist.com | DickMorris.com | Thomas Sowell | Walter E. Williams | Rush Limbaugh | Laura Ingraham. Uh, huh..."unskewed" my ass.

Then there's this laughable one from the aforementioned Robert Stacy McCain at The American Spectator (a well-known "unbiased" source, of course):

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Nearly 4,000 people turned out Tuesday to cheer Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at an airport rally here, their numbers and enthusiasm contradicting polls that show President Obama leading by a wide margin in the Buckeye State. This contradiction inspired me to conduct my own poll, although my methodology might not have been entirely scientific: I walked up to the crowd behind the barricade and shouted, "Does anybody here believe the polls?" The crowd shouted back in unison: "No!"

Perhaps my survey wasn't based on a random sample, but I'm pretty certain of the conclusion: Republicans here are profoundly skeptical of polls indicating Obama on the verge of walking away with Ohio's 18 Electoral College votes....A website devoted to examining sources of bias in polls, UnskewedPolls.com, has become increasingly popular among Republicans....a general belief among Republicans that the numbers are so blatantly wrong that no intelligent and well-informed person could possibly believe them

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No, not based on a random sample; Republicans are skeptical of polls? Of COURSE they are, dumbass, the polls say Obama is winning, gawd forbid they should be right!

He also wrote

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The polls which most favor Obama, including a Washington Post poll released yesterday that showed Obama leading by 8 points, get hyped by the media and are incorporated into a pre-fabricated media narrative that depicts Romney as hapless, ineffective, and "out of touch."

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It's to laugh; even Republicans are calling him and his candidacy "hapless, ineffective and out of touch"...but by gawd, the hard-core righties will deny that 'till the cows come home!

He goes on to write:

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The Romney campaign yesterday took the unusual step of pushing back against the polls, with political director Rich Beeson telling reporters that the campaign's own internal polls show a much closer race in the Buckeye State. Romney is "inside the margin of error in Ohio," Beeson said, emphasizing that the Republican's campaign staff "have confidence in our data and our metrics," while accusing the Obama campaign of "spiking the ball at the 30-yard line" by touting recent polls as evidence of a decisive advantage for the Democrat.

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Gee, I wonder why their "internal polls" are so different? MUST be one of those gigantic librul conspiracies!

As to Rassmussen--which has long been discredited--back in 2010 they were as bad as they are now:

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On Tuesday, polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-we
re-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/

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Ooops...

So we're steadfastly in the Denial stage. I assume now we move into the next step: Anger. Wait for it...

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They want millionaires and billionaires to still believe he can win so they continue to make huge donations in the hope of saving far more in paying practically no taxes.

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