Why The Poll Skewing Rhetoric Now
Here's an assumption that's fairly safe to make in the height of an election season: if a rhetorical point, talking point, argument, or claim becomes popular in the media, it is 1) directed by political operatives and 2) a response to election numbers.. It's axiomatic. So, let's start with that axiom and consider the recent Republican furor over supposedly skewed polls.
On its face, the Republican arguments are very obviously a action to maintain base enthusiasm through the old saw of blaming the media for bad news. That's clear enough. That it is likely also motivated by some attempt to save down ballot candidates is also clear. So, easy enough on those two points. But let's examine more closely.
The real push on this came three or four days after Romney's horrendous 47% comments. That is, you didn't see a big "we-don't-believe-the-polls" argument until the Romney camp and GOP could really start assessing the damage from those statements. The scenario is fairly easy to follow: they started running internal polls after the 47% statement, and it was murder city, just a bloodbath. And they knew that would start translating into actual polls, Gallup, and state polls. The swing in Gallup over the last 10 days is, to put it mildly, shocking. That was already registering in their internals, is the speculation here.
So, the poll skewing rhetoric is not merely a "popular" GOP response to the "bad" (which is to say, good!) polls. It's not just rank-and-file Republicans doubting the polls. Rather, it is a programmatic response from the top of the GOP on down. But it only makes sense if the GOP's own polls have them being slaughtered in numbers resembling what's coming out of the publicized polls. If the GOP's own polls did not have Romney down 10% and virtually finished in Ohio, you would see no arguments about skewed polls.
They argue the polls are skewed, in other words, precisely because they know that the polls are accurate.
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