The polls say Obama leads Romney nationally, and is ahead of him in the swing states. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin are all ahead of their GOP opponents.
Suddenly, the R's have figured out why they're trailing: The polls are wrong! ("Yeah, that's it! We're actually way ahead!") The survey methodology is faulty, the math is bad, and Democrats have been "over-sampled." It's all an anti-Republican plot by the liberal media elite.
Buster has been critical in the past of near-constant public opinion polls. (See the archives, "Polls Are GIGO", 3/25/10.) There's still time and polling can be wrong -- Dewey did not defeat Truman.
But the major polling services are usually pretty accurate, and this chorus of whining makes Republicans seem desperate and grasping at straws. When these same polls showed closer races or even Republican advantage, we heard not a peep. Now that they're falling behind, "the polls are wrong."
To blame a poor showing in an opinion poll on the poll itself is a little like a bad golfer blaming his clubs.
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