Turns out Romney's internal polls needed the unskewing

If Mitt Romney's campaign team had just read Daily Kos, they would have known they were about to lose, but instead they listened to their own pollster's internal numbers'numbers that turned out to be hilariously wrong.

In an exclusive to The New Republic, a Romney aide has provided the campaign's final internal polling numbers for six key states, along with additional breakdowns of the data, which the aide obtained from the campaign's chief pollster, Neil Newhouse. Newhouse himself then discussed the numbers with TNR.

The numbers include internal polls conducted on Saturday, November 3, and Sunday, November 4, for Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire.

Here's what the numbers showed:

• Colorado: Romney +2.5 (actual: Obama +5)
• Iowa: tie (actual: Obama +6)
• Minnesota: Obama +4 (actual: Obama +8)
• New Hampshire: Romney +3.5 (actual: Obama +6)
• Pennsylvania: Obama +3 (actual: Obama +5)
• Wisconsin: Obama +4 (actual: Obama +7)

So Romneyland's internal polling'which undoubtedly cost them hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars'only picked the correct winner in three of those six states. And two of those three weren't actual tossup states, so of the four actual battleground states in the list (Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin), Romney's polling only got Wisconsin right.

And if you just look at the margins, the polling was at least as terrible: these polls were skewed in Romney's direction by an average of more than five points each. That's just abysmal, especially given the sheer tonnage of public data showing Romney's numbers were wrong. Ten minutes on Google would have been more valuable than these polls'and it would have been free.

Combine these numbers with the reports that Romney's internal polling also showed he was going to win Virginia and Florida, and it's not hard to imagine how shocked Romney must have been when he lost. It turns out he really was trapped inside a bubble, living in a world completely disconnected from reality. And to borrow one of his favorite phrases: he really did build that.