Poll investigated for being too accurate

Sometimes, you can't write stupider fiction than the facts, folks.

In Minnesota's recent election for governor, polls reached a consensus that Democrat Mark Dayton was leading his nearest rival, right-wing Republican Tom Emmer, by 5 to 15 percentage points. But in the "official" results (which used to be called an election), Dayton won by less than 0.5%.

A Democrat winning at all made the media red with rage. Why, according to them, the Republicans are ENTITLED to win, dammit! They're Republicans, so it's their birthright, don't ya know.

In addition to suing to overturn the results, they're also demanding an investigation into pollsters.

It'd seem to me like when almost all the pollsters show somebody winning by 5 to 15%, but the election has him winning by only 0.5%, it's not the pollsters who are wrong. It's especially true in this case because Minnesota Republicans have a history of corrupt political bosses who rig elections, and because the pollsters were known to actually have a bias in favor of Republicans. Much of this is the cell phone effect: They underpolled households that have only a cell phone. (Cell phones used to be the province of the privileged, but now many poor households have ditched their landlines.) Plus, the polls are weighted to reflect past elections that the Republicans rigged. Furthermore, pollsters were hired by the media to build a narrative favoring the GOP.

That's 3 strikes right there that show the polls have a Republican tilt. You know Dayton actually would have won by a lot more than 5 to 15%, except the election was rigged.

In almost every other country, when something like this happens, the polls are used to show whether the election is honest. But in the upside-down world of modern American fascism, a rigged election is being used to show whether the pollsters were honest.

Now, right-wing Hitlers have demanded that Minnesota Public Radio and the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute investigate their own poll that showed Dayton leading by 12%. Naturally, MPR and the university are complying with these shrill demands without a fight.

They've announced an "independent" review of their poll by Gallup's Frank Newport. The once-respected Gallup may now be the most inaccurate poll of all, and Gallup may have been the only major pollster to show the Republicans doing significantly better in this cycle than they actually did.

They call that an "independent" audit?

Let's look at how silly this is: A pollster that's relatively accurate gets attacked by a losing party. So this pollster hires another pollster - which is laughably inaccurate - to review its numbers.

Calling this an "independent" review is like how they said Ken Starr was an "independent" prosecutor even though he had worked for Republican administrations.

It's actually yellow journalism, a manufactured story pumped up by right-wing extremists. And MPR and the University of Minnesota fell for it hook, line, and stinker. There's only one word for that, folks: stupid.

It gets sillier. Now the wingnutosphere is claiming that cell-only homes were underpolled in an effort to favor the Democrats - even though it's been proven that the cell phone effect actually makes polls appear more Republican.

Pollsters should be investigated - not for favoring Democrats but for favoring Republicans. Media outlets should be investigated for hiring them to produce these results. (Citizens United has enabled corporations to pay off the media for coverage favoring the GOP.)

And - just as urgently - elections should be investigated.

It's about to crash down regardless, and the sooner we get the ball rolling, the easier this will be.