Arkady
President
With real polling averages having settled into a range of 5-7-point leads for Clinton, conservatives are trying to talk themselves into believing the polls are skewed. Maybe like climate change, scientific political polling is a Chinese conspiracy. Or maybe, like the theory of evolution, it was "encouraged by the Adversary."
Anyway, the right-wing spin is that these polls over-sample Democrats. This isn't new. Right-wingers were telling themselves the same thing at the same point in 2012:
http://www.businessinsider.com/polls-skewed-bias-democrats-2012-9
That's why, even in the face of polls showing a small-but-consistent Obama lead, so many right-wingers predicted a Romney landslide:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...ggest-names-predicting-it-how-it-will-happen/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/12/mitt-romney-heading-for-a-landslide-win/
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/264935-here-comes-the-landslide
Back in 2012, the right-wingers even had their own propaganda site to produce stats more amendable to their worldview. What Shadow Stats and Zero Hedge today do for (or rather to) economic data, in the service of a partisan conservative argument, unskewedpolls.com did for Obama/Romney polling data. Here's a snapshot of what it looked like in its heyday:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121031001154/http://www.unskewedpolls.com/
They were predicting 54% of the national vote and 359 electoral votes for Romney. Unlike with economic spin-doctoring, though, when it comes to elections there's a clear day of reckoning. In November 2012, it arrived for the gurus of "unskewing" polls. Romney got 47% of the vote and just 206 electoral votes. Unskewedpolls.com, which had spent the election season ridiculing the "bizarre world" of Nate Silver's predictions, missed by a mile, while Silver nailed every single state.
In fact, the professional pollsters in 2012 actually erred in Romney's favor. They did too little over-sampling of Democrats, resulting in them predicting a very close election (0.7 points in Obama's favor), whereas in reality it wasn't very close (3.9 points in Obama's favor, in the final tally). If an "unskewed polls" site had done the exact opposite of unskewedpolls.com, adjusting national polls a few points to the left, it would actually have done even better than Silver at predicting exact results.
Anyway, if you want a chuckle, check out what unskewedpolls.com looks like today:
http://unskewedpolls.com/
I guess that even for denizens of the right-wing echo chamber, that kind of failure has consequences, so now the website is focused on selling an eyelash product to the German market. Heheaha. The right-wing spin doctors are still making the same exact claims about skewed polls, these days, but apparently don't want to be associated with such a famous laughing stock of a domain.
Anyway, the right-wing spin is that these polls over-sample Democrats. This isn't new. Right-wingers were telling themselves the same thing at the same point in 2012:
http://www.businessinsider.com/polls-skewed-bias-democrats-2012-9
One allegation that's been levied against some of the latest polls is that they are biased in favor of Democrats. Here's why:
In many recent polls, The percent of people interviewed who say they are Democrats has been consistently higher than the number of people who identify as Republicans. These polls include Marquette (D +8), Reuters/Ipsos (D +22), Pew Research (D +13), University of Connecticut (D +8), and many more.
In many recent polls, The percent of people interviewed who say they are Democrats has been consistently higher than the number of people who identify as Republicans. These polls include Marquette (D +8), Reuters/Ipsos (D +22), Pew Research (D +13), University of Connecticut (D +8), and many more.
That's why, even in the face of polls showing a small-but-consistent Obama lead, so many right-wingers predicted a Romney landslide:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...ggest-names-predicting-it-how-it-will-happen/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/12/mitt-romney-heading-for-a-landslide-win/
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/264935-here-comes-the-landslide
Back in 2012, the right-wingers even had their own propaganda site to produce stats more amendable to their worldview. What Shadow Stats and Zero Hedge today do for (or rather to) economic data, in the service of a partisan conservative argument, unskewedpolls.com did for Obama/Romney polling data. Here's a snapshot of what it looked like in its heyday:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121031001154/http://www.unskewedpolls.com/
They were predicting 54% of the national vote and 359 electoral votes for Romney. Unlike with economic spin-doctoring, though, when it comes to elections there's a clear day of reckoning. In November 2012, it arrived for the gurus of "unskewing" polls. Romney got 47% of the vote and just 206 electoral votes. Unskewedpolls.com, which had spent the election season ridiculing the "bizarre world" of Nate Silver's predictions, missed by a mile, while Silver nailed every single state.
In fact, the professional pollsters in 2012 actually erred in Romney's favor. They did too little over-sampling of Democrats, resulting in them predicting a very close election (0.7 points in Obama's favor), whereas in reality it wasn't very close (3.9 points in Obama's favor, in the final tally). If an "unskewed polls" site had done the exact opposite of unskewedpolls.com, adjusting national polls a few points to the left, it would actually have done even better than Silver at predicting exact results.
Anyway, if you want a chuckle, check out what unskewedpolls.com looks like today:
http://unskewedpolls.com/
I guess that even for denizens of the right-wing echo chamber, that kind of failure has consequences, so now the website is focused on selling an eyelash product to the German market. Heheaha. The right-wing spin doctors are still making the same exact claims about skewed polls, these days, but apparently don't want to be associated with such a famous laughing stock of a domain.
