So it seems that Mitt Romney, the “numbers” candidate, and his
staff, are “shellshocked” about the election results because they
believed all the Faux News types who kept saying the polls were “skewed”
against Republicans (and that if you “
unskewed” the polls, Romney was really winning nationwide by 11 points).
Even worse, Romney decided to use a pollster who skewed more to the
right than all the normal pollster, so they actually thought they were
winning in the days leading up to the election, and that’s why they
wasted time and money in places like Pennsylvania.
From CBS News:
As a result, they believed the public/media polls were
skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn’t
reflect repugican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on
turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave
miscalculation, as they would see on election night.
Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal
polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a
play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also
playing it safe in the last two weeks.
Those assessments were wrong.
“Unskewed polls” showed Romney winning the election by 11 points.
What kind of an idiot chooses a pollster who at best is spot on, and at worst is over-estimating your chances?
I talked to a senior aide on the Hill who told me that his boss
always chooses the pollster who shows him lowest in the polls. That way,
if anything, the campaign is scared into trying harder, rather than
given a false sense of security that leads them to try to compete in
Pennsylvania when they can’t even win Ohio and Virginia.
More from the folks at Unskewed Polls, who are the election version of “birthers”:
Our polls about doubly-weighted, to doubly insure the
results are most accurate and not skewed, by both party identification
and self-identified ideology. For instance, no matter how many
Republicans answer our survey, they are weighted at 37.6 percent. If
conservatives are over-represented among repugicans in the raw sample,
they are still weighted at 68 percent of repugicans regardless. This
system of double weighting should insure our survey produces very
accurate results, not skewed either way for the Democrats or for the
repugicans.
Not just accurate results, but “very” accurate results.
How’d that work out for you?
It’s one thing for Faux to try to sell the country a lie, that’s par
for the course. But for Romney to believed it? As we posted nearly
two months ago, the skills that made Romney a good CEO do not necessarily make him a good president, or a good presidential candidate. But we took took the argument one step further and wrote that it’s a myth that Romney’s even a good CEO.
Here’s a snippet from our earlier piece:
The idea that Mitt Romney is a “good manager” has now
been proven false. The ongoing disaster that is his presidential
campaign proves that Romney isn’t Mr. Fix-it, he’s Mr. Broke-it…
Remember when Romney botched the religious right furor over his foreign policy spokesman being gay?
It was clear that Romney mishandled the situation, but no one realized
at the time that Romney’s poor management skills weren’t a gaffe,
they’re a feature.
Look at his foreign trip. His big chance to prove himself on the world stage. What did Romney do? He offended the British, insulted both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and then desecrated a Polish holy site for good measure. By the time his trip was finished, all three countries were ready for Romney to self-deport asap.
Then there’s the repugican convention, which Romney was in charge
of. In addition to being incredibly boring, on Romney’s big night they
let Clint Eastwood go on stage, unscripted, and wing it for 20 minutes. I
don’t care how good an actor he is, no one gets on that stage without a
pre-approved script. Who would permit such a thing on Romney’s big
night?
Mitt Romney isn’t a bad presidential candidate because he’s a good CEO. Maybe he’s a bad candidate because he’s a bad CEO.
Remember
when, during the second presidential debate, Romney was asked what
happens if the numbers for his $5 trillion tax cut for the rich don’t add up?
CROWLEY: If somehow when you get in there, there isn’t
enough tax revenue coming in. If somehow the numbers don’t add up, would
you be willing to look again at a 20 percent…
Do you remember how an indignant Romney responded?
ROMNEY: Well of course they add up. I — I was — I was
someone who ran businesses for 25 years, and balanced the budget. I ran
the Olympics and balanced the budget. I ran the — the state of
Massachusetts as a governor, to the extent any governor does, and
balanced the budget all four years.
And you were someone who believed the skewed truth coming from Faux
News and the skewed polls from your own pollster, and now, as a result,
will never be President of the United States. That alone should
disqualify you from being President. And it did.
She added that she does in fact think the President is a n—–, but she doesn’t think that’s racist.
