Unscrewed: How 5th-grade political analysis became a GOP article of faith

Recent track of the election survey of the RAND Corporation

Not to toot my own horn, but I was on this Unskewed fella pretty damned early.

Indeed, before he inexplicably became the most-quoted polling analyst in the GOP, the subject of serious profiles in places like Slate and The Atlantic, and even merited mention in a column by Eugene Robinson, readers of our Daily Kos Elections Polling Wrap were introduced to one Dean Chambers.

The purpose, in our case? Gentle mockery:

Speaking of national polling: did you know that Mitt Romney is up by eleven points? He really is! According to the most unintentionally funny attempt at "unbiased polling" you ever will read. Go ahead and read the write-up. While you are at it, check out our man's archives, where you will learn that if you just take the left-wing bias out of polling, Mitt Romney is clearly favored to win 350+ electoral votes. Just...read the whole thing. Oh, and one more thing: You're welcome.

But, in our amused chuckling, something strange and awful happened. People on the right began to mimic the rantings of this small-bore Examiner polling blogger. And the issue of "skewed polls" suddenly, and inexplicably, became among the most discussed items in the electoral and political conversation for the past week.

What is mournful about that is not that Republicans in general, and Chambers in particular, are skeptics about polls showing Mitt Romney at risk of getting routed in November. It is human nature to be doubtful of pessimistic outcomes, especially when your heart is wholly invested in said outcome. Democrats were, to be sure, devout polling skeptics in both 2004 and 2010, while in the interim, it was the Republicans who were certain that what they were seeing on paper was not what they were going to see on Election Day.

My beef with Chambers, and the wave of Republicans that have followed his lead, isn't that it is analysis of polling that runs counter to my own.

My beef is that is simply poor analysis. It would barely qualify as acceptable polling analysis for a middle school student, and even then only because it would be mildly impressive for a middle schooler to be analyzing political polls.

That anyone in the Republican Party, or the political press, is taking him seriously is the biggest indictment of all in this whole sordid episode.

(Continue reading below the fold.)