It's November 7th &

Progressives In America

Are Walking Around Going

"WHAT THE F**K 

JUST HAPPENED??!!"

Allow me to explain it all for you.  

Starting in March when it was clear Romney was going to be the Republican nominee, Democratic-Media Complex pollsters [DMC] started weighting their polls to fit a 2008 Presidential election turnout model.  This was a HUGE mistake, and allow me to explain why.  

As I have explained before, 2008 was a very historic election.  With Democratic voting enthusiasm very high [over 60%, in fact] and Republican enthusiasm extremely low [around 35% according to Gallup] the Democratic party managed a huge turnout advantage of a whopping 7 points.  Often shorthanded to 'D+7'.  

The Democrats turned out for that election - including many new 1st time voters, while millions of Republicans stayed home.  The usual turnout advantage is around 3-4 pts, so +7 was pretty damn high.  

John McCain ran a terrible campaign.  The only breath of life it ever got was when he picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and then he quickly squandered that by suspending his campaign to return to Washington when the financial crisis hit.  McCain was a long-time Washington insider trying to get voters to buy the idea he could reform the way Washington does business.  Many Republicans simply didn't buy this, and so on the day of the election didn't bother to go vote.  

This is why Barack Obama's margin of victory over McCain also exactly matches the Democrats turnout advantage - 7 points.  

But now that Barack Obama & the Democratic Party were completely in control of Washington, American voters got a real, long, GOOD look at what the Democrats would do with that kind of unchecked power, where they wanted to take the country.  

In the 2010 mid-term elections, the American voting public returned it's verdict on the Democrats agenda and the way they had governed for the previous 2 year period: a gargantuan landslide victory for the Republican Party.  The message to Democrats SHOULD have been clear:  we don't like what you are doing, so here's a sh*tload of new Republicans in Congress to put the brakes on your agenda.  

The most important point about that 2010 mid-term election though, is that NEITHER side had a turnout advantage that time.  Instead of the +7 turnout advantage they enjoyed in 2008, in 2010 Democrats ended up TIED with Republicans in the turnout for the election: an exactly even 35% to 35%.  Advantage = +0

What did a TIED turnout election deliver?  Anyone remember?  Liberals/Progressives/Whatever The F**k They're Calling Themselves This Week so quickly flushed 2010 down the memory hole, it'll be good to remember: 

Note how you see almost no light blue on those maps. The Democratic Party lost A LOT of ground in 2010.  

So.......did they learn anything from the stinging rebuke the voters delivered? 

Not at all.  

Obama & Co. didn't change course at all. They kept right on doing the same stuff they were doing the 1st two years of his term.  

So here we are, just 2 years on from that huge bitch-slap of a 2010 mid-term, and MSM pollsters have insisted all year on using a 2008 turnout model for their polls.  Heck, some of them took flights of fancy into deep outer space and actually posited DOUBLE DIGIT Democratic turnout advantages this year.  

Remember, D+7 was HISTORIC.  Pollsters have been claiming all year that the Democratic Party will not just MATCH it's 2008 turnout....they've been claiming they are going to EXCEED it. 

As I've said before, they are just fooling themselves if they think the Tea Party and the millions of Americans that sent an unmistakably strong message to Washington in 2010 just up and changed their minds or something.   

When the election is over and I have time, it'll be fun to go back through the Real Clear Politics Poll history page and see just how many MSM pollsters claimed  to see a D+10 or > in their national polls.  

This chart was made in mid-September to show what the pollsters were doing.  How many of them were saying they were seeing numbers that indicated Democrats would match or exceed their D+7 turnout in 2008?  6 of them were: 

Pew D+7 = 8 pts Obama lead
Reason D+8 = 7 pt Obama lead
Hartford D+8 = 3 pt Obama lead
Ipsos/Reuters D+10 = 5 pt Obama lead
ABC News/WaPo D+10 = 1 pt Obama lead
Dem. Corps D+11 = 5 pt Obama lead

That's just a snapshot of a 2 week polling period in September.  Half the pollsters  claimed to see a 'match 2008 or exceed it' result in their numbers.  

Now back in the spring/summer, consistently polling with a 2008 turnout model was getting Obama big leads.  DMC pollsters wanted to establish early that this wouldn't be any sort of a contest at all. Weighting their polls by a 2008 turnout model and then figuring in the extra 3-4 point advantage an incumbent President has, many of them were seeing Obama leads at 7 pts or greater.  

The narrative they wanted to set by the end of the DNC/RNC conventions was that Romney was so far behind, he would NEVER catch up, so most Americans would tune out the race.  Obama was supposed to be launched out of that DNC like a V-2 Rocket, build his lead, and by the time the debates were over, he was to have clinched the deal and left Romney behind in his dust.  

That's not how it happened.  

Much to the DMC's horror, as summer turned into fall, instead of BUILDING the big lead they started him out with in their polls, OBAMA STARTED SLIDING BACKWARDS. 

Instead of leaving Mitt Romney behind, Obama stalled and Romney started catching him.  

Think of a faulty plane altimeter.  It's 500 feet off, so when you are flying at only 500 feet, you think you are 1,000 feet off the ground.  This is the kind of advantage the DMC pollsters gave Obama right off the bat.  They simply threw out the 2010 election as some kinda anomaly and are trying to recreate 2008.  The actual turnout isn't going to be anywhere NEAR the D+7 or > they've been claiming all year. 

By the time they had to ease back the poll weighting to something approaching reality, Obama was supposed to be so far ahead, it wouldn't matter.  But Obama couldn't seal the deal. He's run a terrible campaign and he can't gain any new support to replace the voters who abandoned him long ago.  

10% of Republicans crossed over to vote for Obama in 2008.  He also got the Independent vote by a 55% margin.  He won't get anywhere near that this time around.  Maybe 2% of the Republican vote IF he's lucky, and he currently trails Mitt with Indies by double digits.  That's around 20 points he had to make up just to get back where he was in 2008.  

So here we are in the final 2 weeks before the election, and now the pollsters are being forced to re-weight their polls and drop the absurd D+7 or greater weighting they've been using.  Their credibility as pollsters hinges on getting that LAST POLL just before the election is held as close as possible to the actual results.  

Which is why the next two weeks any of the pollsters that haven't abandoned D+7 turnout models already will start to do so.  

Let's take a look at today's IBD/TIPP poll, a good example of a pollster still sticking to a D+7 at this late date: 

http://news.investors.com/special-report/508415-ibdtipp-poll.aspx

This poll finds Obama up by 3 pts.  With a D+7 turnout advantage.  

That's pretty much where all the pollsters sticking with a D+7 or > are at right now, Obama either tied or leading by 1-3 pts, inside the Margin of Error [MOE]

But as I've noted before, this ISN'T going to be a D+ turnout election.  It's going to be a R+ turnout election.  What if you take a D+7 poll giving Obama a +3 pt lead on Romney and re-weight it to a R+1? 

D+7 = 3pt Obama
D+6 = 2 pt Obama
D+5 = 1 pt Obama
D+4 = TIE 
D+3 = 1 pt Romney
D+2 = 2 pt Romney
D+1 = 3 pt Romney
0     =  4 pt Romney
R+1 = 5 pt Romney

Oh hey, you'd end up with a Romney lead greater than the MOE.  WHICH IS EXACTLY WHERE GALLUP AND RASMUSSEN ARE NOW.  A Romney lead between 4-7 pts the past week and a half.  

According to THEIR OWN POLLS, the DMC knows if this election isn't D+4 or >, Obama is gonna LOSE.  All the movement is to Romney; they can still use their fantasy weighting of their polls to keep Obama in the lead, but they CAN'T hide the direction the election is moving in.  

Their own polling says Democrats could still 'win' the turnout advantage by +3 and it's still not going to get Obama re-elected.  They have to have D+4 or greater to get Obama a shot.  

It won't happen.  November 7th the numbers will be crunched and Progressives across the fruited plain are going to want to know why after being confidently told for months they were going to bury the Republicans at the ballot box, HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY HAPPEN? 

Because the people you trust for your news serve you ill.  Whether it be the Old DMC of ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCNYT or the new DMC of HuffPo, Daily Kos, DU, Politico, etc.  Their own hubris in declaring the Tea Party dead and then having a total media blackout like that would somehow keep it from having any effect on this election, and then engaging in fantasy polling for more than half a year is just going to end up biting them on the ass. 

Hard.  

Gonna be fun to watch the aftermath.