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Romney actually believed that "unskewed polls" superstition

Einzige said:
Sure. What you're talking about is denial - and it doesn't look good in someone who says, "look here, I'm strictly a numbers guy."
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Well, we're all human. Even Mitt Romney. ;)
 
Kandahar said:
I dunno. I think it's easy for them to say afterwards that they knew all along they were headed for defeat, but during a campaign I'm not sure that's true. The presidency is something that they've been working toward for a very long time...sometimes for their entire life. I would imagine that it would be very psychologically difficult for any candidate to accept that he's going to lose until the minute it actually happens.
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I recall McCain’s pep talk at a rally, thought I can’t recall how many days were left, had the distinct air of a military commander revving up his troops to go out on a doomed suicide mission. It just seemed so obvious to me he knew his campaign was sunk but he had to keep the troops working and slugging it out and turning out as many GOP voters as he could for the good of the candidates down-ticket from him.

Maybe I was imagining things? It isn’ t anything I had seen from Romney or Ryan this year. I’ll see if I can locate the video of it, and will post it to this thread if I do.
 
Kandahar said:
Well, we're all human. Even Mitt Romney. ;)
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True, but it's one thing to say you realized the odds were against you, but you gave it everything you had to maximize your chances ... and another thing to say you just didn't realize you were behind. I honestly think he had to have known. But Romney often says the opposite of what he knows to be true.
 
Bronson said:
How is Obama a Champion? Romney killed some guy's wife remember? Gonna put ya'll back in chains. Vote for revenge.

You're mushy Maggie

You're the Kathleen Parker/Peggy Noonan of these boards. It's pathetic.
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I might be insulted if I knew who they were. As it is? Meh.
 
AdamT said:
I don't buy that. Romney graduated with honors from Harvard Law and Harvard B-School and he made his bones as a numbers guy. He's been in politics for 12 years and if he still doesn't understand how polls work there's some kind of disconnect there.
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Governor Romney knows how polling works. His pollsters incorrectly assumed that the turnout of 2008 was largely a phenomenon driven by special circumstances (candidate Obama, disintegrating economy, etc.) and would not be replicated this time around. What those pollsters missed was the quiet demographic transition that is underway. Demographic change suggested that the 2012 electorate would be at least as diverse, if not more so, than the 2008 one. Wrong assumptions lead to wrong forecasts.
 
MaggieD said:
I might be insulted if I knew who they were. As it is? Meh.
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Ignore the insults, Maggie. From the time I've been posting here at DP, you have distinguished yourself as a principled and thoughtful conservative.
 
donsutherland1 said:
Ignore the insults, Maggie. From the time I've been posting here at DP, you have distinguished yourself as a principled and thoughtful conservative.
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Donald Sutherland. I cannot tell you what this post means to me. Thank you very much. I miss you.
 
Einzige said:
Sour grapes.

My point is that a liberal arts student with a minor in business could have looked at the polls and knew they were right when poll after poll after poll showed that Democratic turnout was as high as the Republicans (higher when you factor in that most independent voters this year were Teabagger pretend-independents) and that their enthusiasm at least equaled the GOP.

I knew Romney was going to lose three months ago.
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Sorry it is what it is

Don't pretend Obama won because he was a successful President. He won because he ran as Santa Claus and the evil Satan Romney bad guy was going to take away the treats that have been flowing from Obama's stash the last 4 years.
 
donsutherland1 said:
Governor Romney knows how polling works. His pollsters incorrectly assumed that the turnout of 2008 was largely a phenomenon driven by special circumstances (candidate Obama, disintegrating economy, etc.) and would not be replicated this time around. What those pollsters missed was the quiet demographic transition that is underway. Demographic change suggested that the 2012 electorate would be at least as diverse, if not more so, than the 2008 one. Wrong assumptions lead to wrong forecasts.
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Nope, not buying that either. Basically all you're saying is that the Romney campaign didn't believe the polls.
 
There are many lessons to be learned from this election and one of the most significant is the right wing carping about polling methods and over sampling of Democrats is a lot of manure. The fact is that Rasmussen and Gallup - the ones the GOP clung to as the truth - ranked 24 and 25th out of almost 30 polling firms in this elections accuracy.

So I really cannot wait until the next election cycle when they want to brag how Rasmussen is so accurate.

And how many times did we have to hear about the bigger and more enthusiastic crowds Mittens was attracting and how that would translate into victory?

How many right wingers here attacked Nate Silver simply because he predicted the Presidents win and they wanted to kill the messenger and were powerless to attack the methodology of the message?
 
AdamT said:
Nope, not buying that either. Basically all you're saying is that the Romney campaign didn't believe the polls.
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I'm suggesting that the Romney campaign believed its internal polls more than the public polls. IMO, if there's a persistent difference between one's internal polls and the large number of public polls, one should question one's own assumptions. Why are one's own polls an outlier? That's an important question. Confirmation bias, of course, is difficult to overcome and it is not unique to politics.
 
MaggieD said:
Donald Sutherland. I cannot tell you what this post means to me. Thank you very much. I miss you.
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Thank you for the kind words. I've had to re-allocate my time (infant in the family), but will continue to post here from time to time.
 
My wife was telling me about this. How fricking arrogant. We can't loose because we are us. if they really believed that they deserved to loose just to give them a reality check.
 
So Romney is a bad guy for trusting those around him? What kind of messed up leadership model does one subscribe to to believe that trust is a bad thing....oh yeah, forgot who you all elected. Question answered, carry on......
 
Fisher said:
So Romney is a bad guy for trusting those around him? What kind of messed up leadership model does one subscribe to to believe that trust is a bad thing....oh yeah, forgot who you all elected. Question answered, carry on......
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Given that his claim to the throne was ultra-competence and being able to run a professional organization ... yeah, I'd say it goes some way to debunking that claim.
 
MaggieD said:
I might be insulted if I knew who they were. As it is? Meh.
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You've just experienced the rightwingnoisemachine tea party dynamic -- unless you are ideologically pure, you're the enemy. This is why by 2016, they'll only be six real conservatives left, and they'll all have talk shows on Fox.
 
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