“I don’t think I have ever seen an election go so far against the anecdotal evidence.”
That is exactly the problem right there. Lots of people here fell into the same trap dems fell into in 2004. They believed in a mythical momentum because they refused to look outside their normal sources and were positive Kerry would win.
If you look at my post history, I used the lessons of 2010 where Gallup and Rasmussen screwed with the party ID numbers and were consequently waaay off on the final.
The point is, don’t put faith in anecdotes. Put faith in social science, statistics and data. Nate Silver was dead on on every single thing he projected and it was disbelief or denial to ignore that data when all he was doing was crunching numbers, not rallying a liberal cause.
I tried to call out Drudge as a Baghdad Bob, Michael Barone as a snakoil salesman and Gallup and Rasmussen as arrogant pollsters who had no business screwing with party ID numbers that are and always have been FLUID, NOT static.
The polls and Nate Silver identified that the white vote would be 72% of the electorate this year, 2 less than 2008 and 4 less than 2004. Gallup predicted 78%...they bent the data!
All the while the black vote remained 13% and the hispanic share of the electorate has increased 2 to 3 points each election cycle. All the mainstream polls stated this and no one here would believe it no matter how loud we yelled. The whole demographics are not in our favor is not anecdotal, it is real and we have devastating evidence of it tonight. We have GOT to find a way to deal with this fact as a party or forget about a party altogether and start anew.
Polls are done by companies to make money. The more reliable they are the more they will make. This idea that they would be intentionally inaccurate goes beyond that simple concept.
We are still counting votes, but wasn’t turnout for this election almost 14 million less than 2004?
What are the demographics on those who stayed home?
This also went against anecdotal evidence of huge voter turnout.