Obama vs Romney Polls: The Media is Oversampling Democrats, and it Skews the Data in Favor of Obama

By Jesse Merkel

Over the past few weeks, a growing number of conservatives and Republicans have been wondering why President Barack Obama, despite his horrible track record, seems to have an ever-increasing lead over GOP Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

On Thursday the Q2 GDP was downgraded from 1.7% to 1.3%, which is a hairs-width above what most would consider a recession.

To make matters worse, the Census Bureau announced that orders for durable goods dropped down to $198.2 billion, a drop of $30.1 billion or 13.2% in August. It is the worst decrease in nearly four years. On top of that, the unemployment rate is still miserable, and has only come down at all because the government has stopped counting people who are no longer looking for work. The number of people on food stamps and receiving disability is at a record high, and the economy has shown only anemic growth only the past four years. The average American's income has fallen $3,040 during the Obama recover.

Obama vs Romney Polls The Media is
Oversampling Democrats and it Skews
 the Data in Favor of Obama

The one area of success where Obama has enjoyed some relatively stable approval, foreign policy, has fallen apart over the past few days. According to reports, it has now become apparent that President Obama and his administration did know that the attack on the Libyan consulate that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens was a terrorist attack, even though they continued blame an anti-Islamic video clip for days.

Above all of that, Obama still is polling close to 50%. Why?

The answer was recently discovered by a few individuals that decided to do the job that the mainstream media refuses to do. Websites like UnskewedPolls.com and others have done their own digging into many of the same polls that appear on the news.

There are several things that a polling firm could do to make sure that its sample is as accurate as possible. First, it helps to base their sample off of likely voters over registered voters. The reason for this is self-explanatory. Likely voters are more likely to actually get off the couch and vote on Election Day. Registered voters may not have voted in years. Second, it helps to make sure that pollsters are basing their sample over the most likely turnout model, which would be 2010.

Most pollsters have been basing their samples on 2008, when Democratic enthusiasm was up, and Republican enthusiasm was sinking. In 2010, the Republicans rebounded. Ever since then, the GOP has maintained high voter enthusiasm. While Democrats have recently jumped back up there, Rasmussen and others have shown higher levels of people identifying as Republicans, than as Democrats.

Because of this, one would not expect polls to be oversampling Democrats while under-sampling both Independents and Republicans, but that is exactly what has been happening. Some samples over the past few weeks have shown between a D +7 and a D +11 advantage! There are only two reasons that pollsters would be sampling so many more Democrats. Either they believe that Democrats will have the same high kind of turnout that they did in 2008, which no one should, or they are trying to discourage Republicans to keep them from showing up.

Finally, people have started to notice. A host of conservative radio hosts, writers and other media personalities have all banded together, writing an open letter to conservatives in which they implore them to ignore the polls. In this letter, they cite the media's constant smearing of Romney, while at the same time its near refusal to cover negative stories about President Obama, such as Solyndra, Operation Fast And Furious, and the sacking of the Libyan consulate.

Of course, many people will automatically roll their eyes. Yet more conservatives crying foul with the media. However, what if it’s true? What if instead of some gigantic conspiracy, it were simply true that many media organizations that were liberal in their ideology were relying on a time honored technique that was designed to protect a president that they liked, and harm a candidate that they didn't? It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter was running well above Ronald Reagan up until just over a week before the election, much of which was due to the media constantly tearing Reagan a new one every chance they got. At one point, Carter, despite his terrible economic record, was beating Reagan by a comfortable eight point margin. 

In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis was also comfortably ahead of George H.W. Bush by double digits at more than one time. (For the record, ICYMI, Reagan and Bush easily trounced Carter and Dukakis). 

The economy is in shambles, and by all accounts it now appears to be slowing even further. People have to realize that it's not because Obama is so likeable, and not because Romney is such a bad candidate. The media is oversampling Democrats in an attempt to depress Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents so that they will not show up to vote on November 6th. Period.

Thankfully, they can't keep it up forever. In order to maintain some credibility and not go out of business after the election, these polling firms will have to show some levels of accuracy the closer we get to Election Day. Some in fact, already have. A new poll shows Romney taking the lead on terrorism, no doubt a repudiation on the presidents handling of the Libyan consulate attack. Anunskewing of the polls in swing states shows a considerably tighter race than any almost any major media outlet would have you believe. Don't just trust the words in front of your face, or a website. Crunch the number for yourself. When one takes into account the extremely high levels of party loyalty, Mitt Romney's enormous lead with independent voters, and a more reasonable estimation of voter turnout, it becomes clear just how tight this race is. (Turning coal into diamonds comes to mind.)

With the debates coming up, it is very likely that we could see a more generous swing in Romney's direction, like the one that voters saw in the 1980 election. Obama cannot run on his record. Any attempt to defend it, and Romney will just point to the recent downshifts. While the President can say he gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden, Romney can counter with Libya. 

Look at the samples. Do the math for yourself. Trust, but verify. 

See more of Jesse Merkel at Policymic here...........  http://jessemerkel.policymic.com/