http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...ion/?mobile=nc
Not everyone predicted President Barack Obama’s victory in the 2012 election. In fact, though the polls showed Obama gaining steam in the finals days of the election, many pundits claimed that the numbers oversampled Democratic voters and explained that voters were more enthusiastic for Mitt Romney. It’s worth immortalizing who said what, and why they did. Here’s a list of ten of the most egregiously blown calls:
1. Dick Morris: “This is going to be a landslide.” The former Clinton adviser predicted a dominant Romney win, calling it “the biggest surprise in recent American political history.” Claiming that polls were oversampling Democrats, Morris wondered if “it will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter.”
2. Roger Kimball: “Obama is toast.” The publisher of prominent right-wing book imprint Encounter Books and a frequent contributor to conservative outlets, Kimball boldly predicted that Romney “is going to win, big time.” It was easy, he could “tell you in three syllables and a few numbers…Ben-gha-zi.” Though the Benghazi story played big in right-wing media before the election, a vanishingly small number of voters reported foreign policy being the top priority in the election – let alone the Embassy issue, which the Romney campaign had completely dropped in the stretch.
3. Karl Rove: “At least 279 electoral votes.” “It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney,” Rove wrote in a WSJ op-ed ignoring the fact that most polls showed growing momentum for the president. He predicted that Romney will win 51 percent of the popular vote and “at least 279 electoral votes.”
4. Peggy Noonan: “There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now.” Noonan is one of the most respected political columnists in the country despite her penchant for deciding things based on her gut rather than actual data. But her Romney prediction wasn’t exactly well thought out even by her own standard. According to Noonan, “all the vibrations [were] right” for a Romney win because “something old was roaring back.” While this might be the right way to open an H.P. Lovecraft novel, it probably isn’t the best way to think about presidential elections.
darrmad 
Hybrid Mode
