The RNC has released their Campaign 2012 Postmortem. It’s full of fun, and sometimes delusional, stuff.
Here is what they said about polling:
The RNC should convene a quarterly summit by April 15, 2013, of leading GOP pollsters to discuss the current political environment and debate assumptions, sampling, screening, and weighting of samples in an attempt to generate more accurate and consistent data across multiple committees and campaigns.
Not a bad idea. If they do it honestly, they’ll likely come to the conclusion that any “likely voter” adjustment that changes results very far from a simple registered voter model should probably be rejected. I think they are getting at that with this point:
“Likely Voter” screening data collected by various firms in 2012 should be re-examined to see which voters eventually voted and which did not, allowing a validation of the most predictive screening questions and likely voter scales. Special attention needs to be given to this question to ensure that we are not screening out casual interest voters who nevertheless show up on Election Day. Screeners that are too robust, particularly during presidential cycles, have the potential to skew results to the favor of our candidates because they exclude too many young and minority voters.
I find much amusement in this confession.
You may recall that during the heat of the election season, there was a rather sudden and surprisingly unified right wing movement to label most mainstream pollsters as biased. Every time a poll came out showing Obama in the lead in a swing state, the representatives of the right wing spin machine went into tirades bordering on apoplexy attempting to discredit the poll by pointing out the poll’s many “flaws”.
When the report mentions “not screening out casual interest voters who nevertheless show up….”, it is an implicit admission that their obsession with better “likely voter” screens was largely unjustified.
From the hand of the propagandists (like Karl Rove and Dick Morris), it was transformed into a full right wing talking point, to be parroted with religious zealotry and absolute certainty by the brainwashed wingding masses. We saw some of the fruits of this process being spewed in the HA comment threads. Indeed, it became daily, if not hourly, masturbation for “Serial Conservative.” Collectively, from Karl Rove and Dick Morris, right down to “Serial Conservative”, they were deep into denial-of-reality territory.
In the end, the mainstream polls were, on average, pretty darned good.
At the time, I thought most of the propagandists didn’t really believe their own bullshit. Rather it was a big propaganda campaign to help with turnout, and instill doubt in Obama supporters. (And it DID do that. One of the remarkable things that happened to me after the election was learning about numerous friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who, unbeknownst to me, were following the analyses on HA. I was told many times after the election that those analyses provided great comfort.) Following the election, there were various clues that the propagandists, in fact, came to believe their own bullshit. They became victims of their own groupthink.
Oh…and on “groupthink” the report said this:
Groupthink is a Loser
1. Our friends and allies must realize that the Party is at its best as the Party of ideas, and healthy debate of those ideas is fundamentally good for the Republican Party.
They haven’t quite gotten this one right. There was no shortage of “ideas” from the right wing during the 2012 election cycle. No…that wasn’t specifically the problem. What they lacked was an ability to operate from the perspective of reality. Here’s what the report should have said: “We need to inform our ideas based on objective, realistic assessments of the world.”
Their response to the polling went beyond wishful thinking and simple confirmation bias…it was a deeply fatal case of reality denial.
The Republicans are always talking about shrinking the size of government but never do it. At least the Democrats don’t pretend one thing and do another on that issue.
I am an agnostic zealot. Other than that, pretty much what you said.
This polling item,
http://www.thegatewaypundit.co.....ney-video/
specifically, was one of the biggest drivers of the ‘denial’ of which you speak, at least in my recollection.
Any thoughts, retrospectively, on a pollster calling an election result this way, Darryl?
Bob @ 2,
“Any thoughts, retrospectively, on a pollster calling an election result this way, Darryl?”
I did have thoughts about it…wrote a whole post about it. In retrospect, my opinion hasn’t changed about Mr. Paleologos’ odd declaration.
@ 3
Darryl, I’d forgotten about that.
This gave me a chuckle:
The worst part: I’m still creeped out by finding myself in agreement with Bill O’Reilly. I mean, what the fuck?!?
Probably the way I feel on the rare occasions I side with Roger Rabbit.
” … to generate more accurate and consistent data across multiple committees and campaigns.”
Here’s all the data they’ll ever need: Stop being assholes.
A wingding?
The Republican self-analysis, post-November, seems to say that they are doomed to defeat unless they solve the “demographic problem”. Their response is to tell Republicans to shut up and stop being idiots with regard to Hispanics (but apparently it’s okay to be idiots with regard to blacks, as long as they are Republican blacks).
And with respect to the Republican War on Women, they also told their people to shut up and stop making comments about rape – at least where it can be heard outside of Republican circles. But today when just about everyone has a recorder in their pocket (I-phone, etc.), then its obvious they cannot even talk among themselves the way they are accustomed to doing so in their country clubs and golf courses – remember that the guy who recorded Romney talk about the “47%” was just a waiter working for the caterer at the function.
So now they’ve conceded that polling was a problem for them, especially when they tried to pare it down to “likely voters”. But the problem is that each campaign has become its own mini-universe of special circumstances and issues, making such identification troublesome.
But the real issue is: what does the Republican Party offer to the working middle class? What is its purpose and ideology, other than winning elections? It remains under the control of the wealthy “financial class”, which it still honors with tax breaks at the expense of the middle class. It says it is against budget deficits, but then tries to gloss over the fact that the current budget deficits are almost entirely of its own making. It says it is in favor of smaller government, but is willing to make it bigger if it protects its own interests. It says it is in favor of individual liberties, but has been willing to encroach upon those civil liberties in ways we couldn’t previously comprehend in favor of “security” (and the protection of their own interests).
I don’t think they can win another election unless they can honestly answer this question.
A bartender actually.. He just put his Canon Powershot on the bar and set the video to record. It didn’t even stick out.. All the wealthy patrons and staff alike brought cameras to record the event.
Heh. I bet Willard RMoney wished that he limited his fundraising to wealthy Mormons only..
Then the bartender truly would have been a waiter.. The hubris of one maniacally ambitious man destroyed by that which corrupts Mormon piety.
# 8 Yes, but everyone who’s done fundraising knows that you need to get your audience good and drunk before you get them to write the big checks!
Actually, we can now count on lots of cameras at campaign events. No longer can Republicans think about holding “private” events and exclude opponants with cameras – it only takes one guy – the waiter, the busboy, the bartender, the guy who sets up the tent – to record what happens. McKenna couldn’t get away with refusing to speak at a “public” event until the Democrat with a camera is thrown out of the room – which is a bit of a shame, since it showed what a putz he was.
From 10,
I’m definitely in favor of cameras watching every move politicians make. Sunshine is the best disinfectant against political corruption. This also applies to the police and other agencies of government.
9 – Excellent point!
TYA @ 11,
Absolutely correct! No question about it!
@4 You’ll really feel creeped out if your skin sprouts fur, your ears grow longer, and you sport a tail. If that ever happens, give me a call, and I’ll teach you how to hop and eat grass.
@7 The GOP’s great vulnerability is they can’t function without being waited on by some low-wage person they treat like dirt, which means they will always have pissed-off social revolutionaries in their midst observing everything they say and do. Some years ago, I noticed that a majority of Washington State’s communist voters were concentrated in one precinct — the Highlands. It seems the live-in servants in Washington’s wealthiest gated enclave were voting for the Bolsheviks en masse.
# 15: It’s hard to maintain the illusion that you are wealthy because you are smarter or harder working than the rest of us when your live-in servants see what a lazy idiot you are on a daily basis.