Today’s RCP Average of presidential polls show Obama leading Romney by a little more than 3 points. A big reason for this is the abundance of polls featuring heavily Democrat skews in their samples. Juice the numbers enough and you can show just about any Obama lead you want. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. A good example of this is today’s Democracy Corps poll. It shows Obama with a 5-point lead over Romney. Of course, the sample for the poll is D+11.
Now, I get tired of saying this but the electorate is not going to be more Democrat this November than it was in 2008. And, the Democrats are certainly not going to increase their share of the electorate by 50%. This is just fantasy. But, its a fantasy with a very specific purpose.
If these polls were weighted to reflect realistic assumptions about the electorate in November, Obama’s lead would not only evaporate, but Romney would probably post a modest lead. Even in heavily-skewed polls like this one, Romney leads Obama on who can better handle the economy. Only be massively over-sampling Democrats can Romney’s advantage on this be partially obscured.
Since the end of the DNC convention and the dismal August jobs report, the media have been rushing to declare Obama the certain winner of the race. Joe Weisenthal at TheBusinessInsider even hilariously declared that the “election is over.” It is a conscious effort to deflate GOP voters and drive down their turnout. It could also be a bit of self-medication. Maybe they soothe themselves by thinking if they just say “obama is winning” enough times it will prove to be so.
They can only credibly do any of this if they are surrounded by polls that reassure them and reinforce their own narrative. And in their own way, polls like this one today are true. Obama is ahead if we assume an historically low GOP turnout and an unbelievably massive Democrat turnout–one even bigger than 2008. But, this is like saying I’m a millionaire already, just as long as I get all of the lottery numbers correct. Kind of an interesting parlor game, but not at all likely to happen.
2012 is shaping up to be the Delusion Campaign. Everyone can assume Obama is winning if they want, as long as they delude themselves that Democrats will have a massive turnout in November. If you need to assume this turnout will be even bigger than the Democrat wave in 2008, it might be time to put down the sauce. The hangover is going to be a bitch.
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