Thursday, November 15, 2012

Remember when Mitt Romney was going to win Oregon?

Remember when Oregon was on the cusp of falling to Mitt Romney? You don't? Oh, that's because you live in the reality-based community. Over in wingnut land, it was a thing that existed:

Screenshot of Breitbart headline:
Earlier today, my colleague, Tony Lee, reported on a new poll from Oregon showing Obama up just six points [47-41] over Mitt Romney. Surprisingly, Obama's support was only 47%, well below the 50% threshold deemed safe for incumbents. To say that Oregon wasn't expected to be competitive is a massive understatement. Obama won the state by 17 points in 2008. While he is certainly favored to win the state this year, his apparent struggles there are a sign of a campaign falling apart in the home stretch.

With one week to go, presidential campaigns usually narrow down to a small handful of states. Candidates focus their time and resources on fewer battlegrounds to gain a decisive edge. This year, however, the battlefield seems to be expanding. Moreover, it's expanding in a way that isn't favorable to Obama.

It was interesting seeing conservatives latch on to a select few outlier polls as if they were the word of god, while furiously dismembering the rest of the numbers (something the Breitbarts bragged about doing). As a result, they went out on a limb that even a dishonest Romney campaign wouldn't touch. Remember, while Romney's people pretended to be competitive in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, they were never so deluded as to utter the word "Oregon." Michigan and Pennsylvania were preposterous enough.

And the results are exactly what everyone expected, a blowout for President Barack Obama.

Oregon 2012 presidential results, with 96% in, Obama 54.5-Romney 42.7. Multnomah County is still only at 80.3 percent reporting, so this heavily Democratic area (home of Portland) will further pad the president's margins. In other words, it wasn't close, and it's going to get even less close by the time all votes are counted.

But in Breitbart/conservative/bizarro world, a poll showing Mitt Romney at 41 percent of the vote somehow indicated that Obama's campaign was "falling apart."

One of the biggest stories of the 2012 presidential election was how thoroughly convinced the wingnuts were of their impending victory. It's not just fun mocking their hilariously wrong predictions. It's also fun looking at the information they used to so fully ill-inform themselves.


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