I don’t think you understood my question (probably my fault). The polls are showing a tight race, with Obama probably leading. The issue is whether they are all built around faulty assumptions. Specifically, the relative turnout of D and R.
Rasmussen’s party affiliation poll has a good track-record in predicting actual turnout. That poll is completely at odds with the assumptions built into all preference polls (including, ironically enough, Rasmussen’s). My question to you is:
do you believe that this poll is an outlier?
My other question would be this: predicting an Obama victory is safe. If you are wrong, then you can always say that everyone else did to. Why then are people like Barone, Rove, Severin, Dick Morris, and now Peggy Noonan going out on such a limb in predicting a Romney victory/landslide? Why stake their reputation in that way, unless their sources are telling them something that is at complete odds with the polling consensus?
Occam’s razor would appear to apply here. The simplest explanation is that the facts on the ground don’t support the polling consensus’ assumptions, and internal polls don’t either. And these well-connected insiders are willing to stake their reputation on the actual data, as opposed to made-for-tv polls. Given the behavior of the Romney and Obama campaigns, they too don’t believe that the consensus is accurate, either.
Don’t waste your breath my friend. Longbow has had this explained to him/her about a hundred times on a dozen threads in the past few days.
I'm really not sure what to tell you. These are mostly all conservatives you listed and in a close race, it is to be expected they will say they think Romney will win. Some may really believe that, others, like Rove, are probably just towing the party line. They are on our side and lose some of their ability to be objective. I try to be objective at all costs.
For me to believe Mitt was going to win, I'd have needed to see poll movement breaking for him over the last couple days of the race. I am not seeing that. If anything, it looks like the majority of the polls are breaking towards Obama. Gallup was our best poll, and now we are down to a 1 point lead. Pew and ABC/Post now have Obama with a 3 point lead. To beat an incumbent, we needed to have everything break our way and I just don't see it.
Look you can point out the D+ numbers in these polls, but I honestly don't think most people commenting on that have the slightest clue what they are talking about. To give you an idea how silly its become, we have whole websites trying to "unskew" polls. You can't just re-weight a poll to "unskew" it. That's absurd. Pollsters are simply finding more self described Democrats in their poll. For a whole host of reasons a lot of center right voters are describing themselves as Independents in a majority of the polling done recently. When specifically pushed via questions into one party or another you see the Republicans doing better, but in the average poll the high D+ number and unusual pro-Romney independent sentiment are because of the way people self identify.
I will stick to my prediction. If anything I think this thing will break a little more to Obama. I see it as generally a 51 O - 49 R race. It's going to be a heartbreaker for a lot of people who I honestly don't think even considered the idea that Obama could be re-elected.