At this moment, roughly 24 hours out from another historic election, an election in which an absurd majority of polls has Obama ahead, what is a conservative blog to do in order to stop this depressing news?
Why, you talk up long debunked arguments as to why ALL the polls have it wrong and you are right! However, just in case you missed the debunking, join me below!
Now, I am somewhat of a masochist apparently because I am addicted to reading conservative blogs/websites and the user comments therein. So naturally, I have run up against these arguments more frequently than the average progressive. Lets take a look!
1. "The poll is oversampling democrats by +6 yet Obama is only ahead by 3! That must mean that Romney will win by a landslide!"
Absurd: As has been stated time and time and time again, party identification is FLUID. The participants are not picked out before hand based on party ID. But rather, it is determined by how each respondent identifies THEMSELVES. In other words, the people are picked and then identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, or Independent as part of the survey.
Still not convinced? If not, then how would you explain a Rasmussen poll with R+2 or more showing the race EVEN at 48-48? By their own twisted logic, "Obama should be ahead by 2, so Obama landslide! Wait! What did I just say?"
The fact that a CNN D+11 poll and an Rasmussan R+2 poll can both come up with the same result of "the race is tied" completely destroys their own logic (regardless of how inaccurate Rasmussen is known to be according to, oh I don't know, actual facts), yet no one ever brings it up on these conservative blogs.
2. "Recent Gallup poll has Romney 49 Obama 48, since the incumbent can't reach 50, he is toast!"
Plain old silly: Lets just ignore the fact that George Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 (only got %47, hehehe...) and STILL won. It's as if they have selective hearing and intentionally block out the fact that the electoral college is what determines the victor. Now, why would they intentionally forget this? Oh yeah, because Obama is leading in most swing state polling and thus has the advantage, thus mentioning it on your blog could result in wingnut backlash and republican depression.
And this argument of mine completely ignores the fact that Gallup has been terrible this year and in previous years (just read the whole link if you are unconvinced)
3. "Gallup has Romney up by 1, throw in some [wishful thinking] and it's bad news for Obama!" (replace [wishful thinking] with, voter enthusiasm advantage, democrat oversampling, independents breaking for Romney, etc.)
Malarkey: Firstly, lets remember that Gallup is a tracker shall we? So if this is the case, then what is the current trend? Since they feel that Gallup is a reliable tracker, they would perhaps agree that a good way to determine the trend is by looking at Gallup's last major release before hurricane Sandy and compare it with today's.
Well, waddaya know? Obama was DOWN 5 points (R 51-O 46) according to Gallup. If after the first debate, so many conservatives claimed that as low as %0.5-%1 bump for Romney was unstoppable Mittmentum, what would a %5 bump for Obama be? Omentum? Of course, don't expect them to comment on this, since as we all know, they are talented at making sure reality does NOT affect their world view.
Now I must say that I don't actually believe that Obama got a 5 point bounce. It is more likely that Gallup is trying to get in line. Either way, it is bad news for Romney.
4. "How can [insert poll] have Obama ahead (or both tied) if independents are breaking for Romney? Clearly this poll is flawed! With that much support from independents, Romney has already won this."
Wishful Thinking: As previously noted, party identification is FLUID (for conservatives witha short memory span)! Now, it IS true that independents have been more supportive of Romney than Obama, but this blanket statement:
A. Only applies at the national level (state level has actually varied, and more importantly in the swing states).
B. Many republicans left the party and became independents, thus their slightly more conservative lean at the national level (the link is to a TPM article by Josh Marshall). Have the wingnuts already forgotten about the tea party and their dissatisfaction with the GOP? Redstate's best attempt to debunk Marshall' argument was debunked by one of their own commenters:
I think you're misreading the lines on Marshall's chart. Those are trend lines, not actual data points. They are most likely polynomials selected for a least squares fit. I would expect a discrepancy between the trend lines and the actual data points (the dots scattered on the graph).
Just looking at the graph, there does appear to be a strong negative correlation between the change in R party ID and the change in I party ID. In other words, the R share decreases as the I share increases, which would seem to indicate some turnover between the two groups. I don't know if it's enough to account for Romney's increased share of the independent vote, though.
(Emphasis mine)
Perhaps I'll elaborate more on this Redstate post (it is graph heavy) in an update.
5. "[insert single poll] has Romney up, so he wins!"
Very Foolish: If we've learned anything this election year (and particularly, if Nate Silver has taught us) it is that you don't rely on one poll! Time and time again, I see conservative blogs like Redstate, Hotair, and Freerepublic base ENTIRE arguments on 1 poll. Here on Dailykos? We accept ALL polls and base arguments of those (so long as they are reputable).
A perfect example would be the Zogby polls, which give Obama hefty leads and Romney "hefty" lows. Even though they are in our favor, we REJECT them, because they are unreliable and don't represent reality accurately enough. What we DON'T do is look at this one poll and try to make a pathetic argument for Obama based on it. We can, as of now, make a strong argument for Obama because the aggregate of polls prove our point!
6. "Romney's internal polls say he is winning, so he is winning!" (He released his internals today)
Romnesia: Beyond the fact that a campaign releasing internals a day before the election stinks of desperation, we have seen this before. As dailykos user jaywillie noted earlier today in a comment, John McCain did the same thing in 2008. That sure went well for him, didn't it?
Besides, why trust these numbers from Romney when all he has done this campaign season is lie?
7. "But Dick Morris said..."
Dick Morris: nuff said.
That's it for now:
If you have seen any other obscenely stupid arguments from the GOP, please comment on them below and I'll add them to this list in updates (with credit).
Furthermore, if I should update/correct any of my rebuttals, please don't hesitate to mention below!
And most importantly, please realize that this election is NOT in the bag. We HAVE to GOTV to keep our margins and to win this thing. You can relax on Nov. 7.
