Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation poll: Republicans are all poll denialists

Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 9/27-30. Likely voters. MoE ±2.8% (9/13-16 results):

So Republicans are convinced the polls are skewed:

Do you think pollsters are intentionally skewing their polls this year to help Barack Obama, or not?

Just 13 percent of Republicans eschew the ridiculous notion that there is a polling industry-wide conspiracy to undercount Republican support in the 2012 presidential election.

So are the 71 percent of Republicans who buy that conspiracy theory responding to last week's full-court efforts to explain away Romney's abysmal poll numbers, or is this another manifestation of the already existing GOP pathos and persecution complex at work?

If we asked, "Do you think the laws of physics are intentionally helping Barack Obama, or not?", chances are a majority of Republicans would answer "yes," since it's clear to them that the whole universe is arrayed against them. Reality, after all, has a well-known liberal bias.

However, the aggregate opinion polling does a great job of predicting final election results, so what happens when once again, the polling is proven generally right on Election Day? Conservatives have effectively built their very own reality distortion field to filter out unwelcome information. But at some point in this case, reality has to intrude. So if the polls are wrong, and the election results validate the polls, then what? Charges of voter fraud?

In other poll findings, Obama leads Romney 49-45, the same four-point margin as last week's 50-46 findings. But for fun, we split out the results into red, blue and purple states:

We used an expansive definition of "swing state", so that's: CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MO, NH, NV, NC, NM, OH, PA, VA and WI. These states are 40 percent of the sample, so factor in a higher margin of error (about 4.67 percent).

Blue states: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MA, ME, MD, MN, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT and WA.

Red states: AL, AK, AZ, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV and WY. The Blue and Red states are each 30 percent of the sample (MoE 5.39 percent).

That Obama leads in Blue states by 19 points isn't surprising. But Obama losing the Red states by just 11 is. It shows that even in hostile territory, Obama gets significantly broader support than the other guy. It also suggests that Democratic down-ballot candidates running in Red areas will have a somewhat easier time getting to 50 percent than Republicans running in Blue areas (think North Dakota and Arizona Senate races, versus Massachusetts and Connecticut).