The Political Freakshow

The Number Game: Conservative Website Says That Romney Is Winning In Polls, Because They Twisted and Bent the Numbers To Make Their Imaginary Case

Sure, Barack Obama appears to be holding a slim but consistent lead in many reputable national polls. But what if we just changed those polls, so that Mitt Romney is winning? That’s the theory behind UnSkewed Polls, a new site from conservative blogger Dean Chambers:

Looking at the internal data, Chambers saw that the polling unit had sampled more Democrats than Republicans. “There’s no way they can justify that sample,” Chambers, 44, told BuzzFeed.

Since July, Chambers has re-weighted national polling data from organizations like Gallup, ARG, and the three networks, to fit the Rasmussen Reports partisan trends. Chambers has published 30 “unskewed” polls on his website and on examiner.com, a national network that pays independent bloggers on a wide range of subject by traffic.

According to UnSkewed Polls, Romney is beating Obama by an average of 8 points, and the president’s approval rating is only 44 points.

Does this work? According to Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports, the Republican polling firm that Chambers uses to peg his sample sizes, no: “[Y]ou cannot compare partisan weighting from one polling firm to another,” he told BuzzFeed. But on the other hand… don’t these results feel more right? Because, when you think about it, you hate Obama, and so does your wife, and the people you talk to on Twitter, so, obviously, most of the people in the country hate him?

In fact, a lot of poll results could do with some UnSkewing! I’ve put some of them through our patented UnSkewing Machine:

Skewed Result: Radiohead’s OK Computer tops Pitchfork’s People’s List with 25 percent of vote.
UnSkewed: If we re-calibrate Pitchfork’s sample sizes to properly weigh my opinion, then the real winner of the People’s List is Steely Dan’s entire discography, with 100 percent of the vote.

Skewed Result: Alabama is number one in the AP’s college football rankings.
UnSkewed: AP traditionally over-samples sportswriters, at the expense of Gawker.com bloggers. A more equitable weighing of samples reveals my alma mater Occidental College to be the number-one college football team in the country.

Skewed Result: America has the worst maternal death rate of any industrialized country.
UnSkewed: Maternal mortality figures don’t scientifically account for the fact that American owns. UnSkewing the results shows that America rules and Canada sucks.

Skewed Result: According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Mitt Romney has the support of 0 percent of African Americans.
UnSkewed: This one seems about right.

[UnSkewed Polls via BuzzFeed, Dave Weigel]