So my 78 year old dad was stunned election night

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Bevo Incognito

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My dad is a super smart guy, has a master's degree, speaks several languages and has had an amazing life. He's still very sharp and very much engaged in what's happening.

So I spoke with him tonight and he was telling me he absolutely could not believe that Obama had won. I asked why and he told me that he had completely swallowed a FOX news narrative that had developed over the last few months that Republicans were being undersampled by polls and that Romney was going to beat Obama handily. Of course, I hardly watch any TV of any kind other than sports so I haven't seen what Fox has been up to, but he said that it had become an article of faith for nearly every FOX anchor and commentator.

He pretty much has only watched FOX for the past few years but he told me that he is going to "start watching a lot more CNN" because FOX has apparently been completely and utterly wrong about this whole "undersampling" thing.

I told him about Nate Silver and he was rather amazed.

Anyway, I think it gave me insight into a lot of the posts here on this BBS that said the same thing, that the polls were undersampling Republicans. I now understand where this meme was coming from. There were several people here and on Shaggy Bevo who were arguing "undersampling" thing for a long time.
 
He should know better than to trust once source of information. Its easy to become lazy and just get used to listen to a certain segment of the population then just gradually accept it as truth.

I dont generally watch a ton of fox, however the last 2 days has been a epic meltdown so I watch for entertainment of course. Most of them agree about the GOP is the party of old white men. As they age and demographics change that party is over. I don't see their ilk changing their ways any time soon.
 
THIS. This is the problem. The GOP and its adherents have Fox "News" and their radio programs feeding them CRAP all day long. Seriously, these people are living in an alternate universe with its own set of unique (read FALSE) "facts" and spew that garbage out to each other as "issues" facing the nation. It is mind boggling.

Almost NONE of the GOP narrative is true. Almost NONE of it. Nate Silver is no genius, he simply paid attention to past polling and figured out that when you have three different polls saying the same thing... they have been right ~ 75 of the last 77 times or so.

It is simple ******* common sense but you cant have a reasonable conversation with people who get their talking points from Fox News. I have no idea how anyone watches that **** - it is so obviously for the mentally unsound and so obviously a pile of BS that I am left to believe that people who watch it are either new to TV or just not all there.
 
There's so many viewpoints. For example, I think Noam Chomsky is a destructive force in our culture, and think he is so much further from any reasonable centerpoint than Fox News that it isn't even close. Hard to understand why you glorify him. Again, there are lots of viewpoints, and that doesn't make them all stupid as you seem to think. Not sure what makes you so angry.
 
The Link

Romney/Ryan were "shellshocked" I mean WTF?!?

What kind of staffers did these morons have? This is what happens when Fox "News" is the only channel followed by your campaign.
 
They relied mainly on Rasmussen and Gallup, or at least that was my impression.

Hurricane Sandy did two things: (1) broke Romney's momentum, and (2) put the daily tracking polls on hold for about a week. Once those two polling services resumed, they both indicated a pretty even race, as opposed to the pre-Sandy polls, which were leaning a bit toward Romney.

As a conservative, and one who watches Fox News fairly regularly, my impression was that the post-Sandy electorate was pretty much dead even. The "glass half full" point of view at that point relied on the theory that voter intensity was on Romney's side in spite of the even polling.

We'll never know for sure. Either the voter intensity angle was too hopeful or Hurricane Sandy had an important effect on our more sentimental voters. Possibly both.
 
Ok, that's fine. I'm just telling you that as a watcher of Fox News, I had no idea who was going to win the election as of the morning of election day. I can promise you I was hopeful, but by no means expectant. And most other conservatives I know felt pretty much the same. The OP's dad is a nice anecdote, but it's just one anecdote. The fact that it fits a particular narrative about the nature of the media and its relationship to its viewers does not make it instructive.

However, if the OP and others are going to condemn a news organization for misleading the people, then I'm wondering when they will condemn the other news outlets for intentionally suppressing the Benghazi story and the three separate scandals that have emerged from it so that their preferred candidate could maintain a winning margin?

When can we expect that to happen?
 
The Friedersdorf article argues along the following lines: Conservatives are surprised because they were misled about the election, but that's merely an extension of the fact that they've been misled about the issues for some time now. They were conditioned, so to speak, to believe overly-optimistic pollsters because that's the only way they could imagine Americans responding to the wretched situation as they understood it.

The logic suggests that the better than expected performance by Obama on election night is proof that conservatives were wrong on the issues. It's a self-serving argument that (1) presumes that political victory is a function of being correct on the issues, and (2) misunderstands the true nature of the disappointment felt by conservatives.

Let's see if I can say it somewhat clearly: It's not that conservatives are surprised at the way the election went; it's that they are disheartened by the realization that we've reached the point where that which is good for winning elections is now incompatible with that which is in the best interest of the greater good of the country as a whole. I think conservatives realize they're outgunned on the votes, as the electorate is currently composed. That's a mild surprise, perhaps, but certainly no shock. But what's dawning on conservatives is that they are hemmed in by their own principles, which they believe, in their heart of hearts, are the correct principles. To depart from those principles in order to pander to a voting block seems self-defeating. And they're correct about that. It is.

The answer is that conservatives are going to have to do the hard work of bringing the message of the greater good--as opposed to the politics of self-interest--to segments of the electorate that have heretofore been lukewarm or else hostile to that message. They're going to have to convince Hispanics as Hispanics to assume a voting identity that has nothing to do with being Hispanic. And likewise, they're going to have to convince blacks as blacks to assume a voting identity that has nothing to do with being black. And so on and so forth.

That will be exceedingly difficult. But that's what has to be done.
 
I will take it a step further. I think Fox is so over the top it drives away undecideds. It reminds me of a guy I know who used to be a Dungeons and Dragons addict years ago and there was this religious right group up in arms about D&D being a bunch of devil worshippers. His take was he wasn't sure what all the right answers were, but he knew they were wrong since he had just killed a devil in the game. Ever since then he's known the right wing fringe is totally full of ****.
 
Good link BI.

Yeah, for the folks who think Beghazi is bigger than Watergate, the election outcome must have been a helluva a surprise. Honestly, I don't watch much FOX and thought the network's obsession with the "Obama was born in Kenya" story was hilarious well before the release of the second birth certificate. The fact that FOX is making a big deal about Beghazi and nobody else is makes me pretty certain it's just another BSmountain creation. As my father explained to me "either you're honest or your're not." Honest people can make mistakes, but I've seen enough BS from Fox News to be certain there's not much intellectual honesty over there.
 
Crockett, what a "crock." If Benghazi had been during Bush, just like Sandy, there would have been 24/7 coverage by the networks. The fact that Univision asks BO tough questions about Benghazi while the US media largely ignores it speaks volumes about how pathetic and lazy and one sided journalism has become. Benghazi would have been a "story" that would have made a journalist a "star", but now most of them can't even write complete sentences. Pathetic.
 
I swallowed the under sampling of Rs as well. He's in good company (at least I'd like to think so).

I also think people tended to agree more with Romney on issues but they liked Obama more (a lot more).

I'm waiting to see what the explanation is as to how/why Romney underperformed with Rs relative to McCain. That stat just amazes me.
 
I see Karl Rove on FOX right now, advising potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates on what they should be doing.


What does this man have to do before people quit listening to him? He birthed Bush, who gave us exploding budgets and invaded a country based on either false, wrong, or trumped-up reasons (depending on your perspective), then completely and utterly failed with his two SUPERPACS this year.

"Discredited" doesn't begin to describe him. And yet there he was.
 
Fox is the only US news channel I have here, so I do watch it a fair amount. I have some European and international news channels, and I watch them from time to time but not consistently. (They're good channels, and I like a lot of their topics, but they also throw in a lot of crap that I don't care about.)

I wasn't fooled into the Romney blowout myth, but only because I know that Fox News is the GOP's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and not a legitimate news source.

They aren't useless. Their regular news segments are fine, and I've always thought Shepard Smith was very good at what he does (so long as he's just doing the news). However, their political commentary is just so ridiculously one-sided and predictable that I can't take them seriously anymore.
 
Great post and link, Giovanni.

If the GOP takes that to heart then the healing can begin.

I'm not holding my breath....
 
OP, you do realize that there were other mainstream media outlet, many who the left would consider more legitimate that were predicting essentially a deadheat election. No matter who won and by how much, there was going to be a poll, a news organization, a pundit, a talking head...who was going to be able to claim they got it right and a bunch of others who have egg on their face.
 
Get a rope!


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