Unskewed Polls Guy Now Claiming Election Was Stolen
Dean "Unskewed Polls" Chambers is back, and he's as deluded as ever.
As Steven Taylor has already noted, Dean Chambers, an otherwise mediocre writer who somehow decided that he could personally manipulate polling results he clearly didn’t fully understand, attained fame on the right during the final month of the election by asserting that the polls were “skewed” because pollsters were oversampling Democrats. Along with many others, I explained at the time, here and here, why his arguments were utter nonsense, but that didn’t stop many prominent people on the right from rallying behind him not because his arguments made sense, but because the news he was sharing made them feel good. The election, of course, demonstrated quite emphatically the the polling that had shown the President leading Romney at the state level, and building up an Electoral College majority that made Romney’s task nearly impossible in the end. Initially Chambers responded to the news by admitting he was wrong and criticizing conservative pollsters like Scott Rasmussen who were clearly wrong, although he failed to apologize for his vile smear against New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver. Now, though, Chambers has apparently joined the ranks of those people who claim that the election was stolen by fraud at the swing state level:
Pro tip for Dean Chambers: When you completely embarrass yourself by declaring the polls to be “skewed” (they weren’t), call out Nate Silver for being potentially gay (as if it would impact his analysis), and beclown yourself all over the national scene, don’t follow up such a performance by setting up a website declaring t
But you, sir, by peddling in such blatantly filthy silliness, are the enemy of the conservative movement. You actively seek to profit by misleading your fellow citizens and supposed ideological allies. You contribute to an epistemic bubble and make it harder for everyday Americans to discern truth from fiction, partisanship from objectivity, and skewed from unskewed. You are the very definition of a troll.
A perusal of Chamber’s new site reveals that he is peddling in the same kind of paranoid conspiracy theories about stolen elections that I’ve seen from some other elements of the right in the weeks after the election, and not all that dissimilar from similar theories we saw from the losing side in 2004 and 2008.
With respect to Pennsylvania, for example, he points to the fact that President Obama won 59 heavily African-American voting precincts in Philadelphia with 100% of the vote. As I noted when I wrote about this after the election, though, this isn’t all that surprising considering that the President got a nearly 100% of the African-American vote nationwide, and that these are precincts in which, in many cases, The Philadelphia Inquirer could not find a single registered Republican. Finally, the President won the City of Philadelphia by over 450,000 votes, so huge margins of victory in the precincts where African-Americans live aren’t at all surprising. Add to all of the fact that there were many Philadelphia precincts where Obama got 100% of the vote in 2008, and this outcome really isn’t all that surprising and, by itself, not evidence of voter fraud.
Chambers’ claims with respect to Ohio are similar to those for Pennsylvania, principally the fact that there were a number of precincts in Cleveland, also heavily African-American, where Romney get no votes at all. Again, though, this is not evidence of voter fraud in and of itself. President Obama won Cuyahoga County by more than 235,000 votes, grabbing just under 69% of the vote. Given this, it’s not surprising that there might be African-American precincts where Romney got no votes. Moreover, as in Pennsylvania, it’s absurd to think the Mitt Romney was going to be competitive in inner city precincts that are predominantly African-American. This isn’t fraud, it’s demography.
Moving on to Virginia, Chambers demonstrates here that he has absolutely no understanding of politics:
For the entire evening, as the vote totals were coming in, Mitt Romney lead in Virginia and continued to lead up to the point where 97% of the voting divisions were counted in Virginia and Romney held a 50 percent to 49 percent lead, enough of a lead that should have been upheld with only three percent of the votes left to be counted. When they finished counting the votes in the state, at the last minute the total went to 51.1 percent to 47.4 percent in favor of Obama, after showing a lead of 1-4 percent lead in favor of Romney the entire night.
Has this guy never watched election returns before? There’s a very simple reason why this happened. For much of the night, the numbers coming from Virginia were coming from counties that were very pro-Romney. For the most part, these were rural counties with smaller populations than areas like Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area. Additionally, the Virginia Board of Elections announced early in the evening on Election Night that vote totals from those areas would be coming in slowly because of the fact that people were still voting and there were unusually long lines. Indeed, at 9:00pm that night, one hour after the polls have closed, there were reports from across Northern Virginia of people still standing in lines waiting to vote, with estimates that it could be as much as another hour before many of those people would be able to get inside to vote (fortunately, it was a relatively warm night that night.) Results from those precincts would not be reported until voting had concluded. Chambers goes on to list eight Virginia jurisdictions that put Obama over the top. Five of those jurisdictions have large African-American populations. The other three (Alexandria, Arlington County, and Fairfax County) are areas that have been going Democratic for years now. Once again, no evidence of fraud.
Finally, Chambers hits Florida where he claims, well, I’m not sure what he claims here because all he does is list a bunch of precincts in in Broward County where the President got 90% or more of the vote. Without knowing for sure, I’m going to guess, safely I would submit, that these are all heavily African-American and/or Latino areas. Once again, not a surprise to see the President doing well in those types of areas.
There’s no fraud here, and Chambers has revealed himself to be a Class A political hack by even suggesting it.
Well, duh! Obviously, all those polling stations oversampled Democrats too…
I am not inclined to believe that these elections were stolen in any larger degree than Democrats have been stealing elections for 50 years. But there are reports of very fishy turnout. Polling locations with nary a single Romney vote and precincts with 90% voter turn-out, which is almost statistically impossible unless you started out with more voter registrations than voters. Many precincts that cumulatively led to Obama taking all but one of the swings states have VERY VERY close margins. it is not impossible to imagine that some of the precincts were manipulated by folks who wanted Obama to win. The problem is that these areas are dominated by Democrat political folks that have no desire to go back and identify problems that were raised.
Well, if there is any question at all, I think it’s best left to the SCOTUS to decide.
Well that pretty much settles it.
No polling location is wiothout at least one idiot who would vote Republican.
Let’s have Scalia decide.
@Merit Man:
Are you married to a person named Jan by any chance?
Wow…what is it about Obama that sends so many Republicans off the deep end, I just find it hard to believe that so many republicans forgot that when they were born, God handed them brains not trains.
OMG! Romney stole Utah!
@Merit Man:
But there are reports of very fishy turnout. Polling locations with nary a single Romney vote and precincts with 90% voter turn-out, which is almost statistically impossible unless you started out with more voter registrations than voters.
That’s a lot of talk with no evidence whatsoever. Which precincts had such high turnout? How did the turnout compare to recent presidential elections? Explain how it is “statistically impossible.”
it is not impossible to imagine that some of the precincts were manipulated by folks who wanted Obama to win.
I can imagine I’m a millionaire with a gold house and a rocket car, but that doesn’t make it so. Evidence of vote manipulation please. And your side losing doesn’t count.
The problem is that these areas are dominated by Democrat political folks that have no desire to go back and identify problems that were raised.
First of all, the other party has rights to oversee these things, and courts to appeal to if they cannot. Do you have evidence that Republicans have been kept out of a recount process or something similar?
I think you have nothing but wild and careless speculation from sore losers.
Delusional, or selling a product?
@Merit Man:
You realize that the stuff you just brought up was addressed in the post itself? Like, six inches up the page?
If you have hundreds of precincts that are, let’s say, 90% black and 9% Latino and 1% Asian, and those demos went 95%, 70% and 75% for Obama, then yes, as a matter of fact, you will have some of those precincts showing zero Romney votes. Especially if you’re talking areas where the Democrats were focusing turn-out operations and where the GOP would have zero turn-out operations.
You and your ilk need to figure something out once and for all. Merely being able to say, “Isn’t it strange that. . .” is not evidence. You are not the possessor of secret understanding. You will never, ever be the possessor of secret understanding that is hidden from the common man. Just never.
In this case it isn’t even strange. Strange would be getting Romney votes in all-black areas.
Class A political hack? I think of guys like Karl Rove and Dick Morris as that category. Chambers is D-list at best.
…. and away we go… the delegitimizing process has begun…
If anyone has a right to be cranky, I think it would be those on the left about the SCOTUS heap of garbage in their decision of Bush v. Gore. Y’know, the decision that they all said shouldn’t be used ever used again as precedent for any future case? The decision that nobody wanted to put their names on? The decision that Sandra O’Connor said later was one of the worst legal decisions she had ever made?
Dean Chambers is no less credible than Romney’s internal pollster Neil Newhouse, Redstate’s fake poseur quant Dan McLaughlin, Dick Morris, Rove, Barone, etc.
He’s just the logical conclusion of innumeracy on the right.
And his reward will be endless guest appearances on Hannity and O’Reilly.
@Merit Man: How odd that neighborhoods that the GOP has accussed of being slaves to the Democrat plantation, voting due to their love of lawlessness and/or cell phones and being inherently lazy might have some real motivation to vote against Romney!
The only “election was stolen” conspiracy theory I give any credence to is that the hacker group, Anonymous, successfully thwarted attempts by Karl Rove to steal the votes in Ohio:
http://motleynews.net/2012/11/16/anonymous-claims-to-have-hacked-into-karl-roves-orca-thus-stopping-his-vote-switching-2/
Until Anonymous provides concrete proof of their involvement, it will remain a fun little conspiracy theory to ponder.
I’ll be fair and note he DID apologize for what he called Nate Silver. Credit where it’s due – hell, it puts him light-years over many other pundits.
I love the message coming from the right starting day one into Obama’s presidency, and running right up to now is:
“Obama is in over his head! Obama is a bumbling, incompetent fool, who doesn’t have what it takes to run the government!…”
Then the election happens…
“Who was able to orchestrate a multi-state voter fraud campaign, the likes of which the world has never seen!”
Alert, James: the site is having adds refusing to close. Survey ads that block the actual website.
The right has rarely had a terribly coherent narrative about Obama (though they really enjoy the adjective “feckless”). He’s always been a barely literate boy-king who simultaneously is behind some grand overarching conspiracy. Heck some of the rhetoric regarding the 2012 election was about electing Romney instead of the dictator that was in power.
That alone should make someone’s head explode
@Brian:
Actually, he only admitted Silver was right; he never actually apologized for any of the things he said about Silver.
@nitpicker: Romney would never steal Utah. He’d buy it, load it up with debt, strip the assets, and put it into bankruptcy.
In 2008, the Republican presidential candidate won every county in Oklahoma. That wasn’t a sign if voter fraud because obviously, Republicans don’t engage in voter fraud, I guess.
I’m betting Obama got shut out in Oklahoma again. It would be interesting to get Mr. Chambers thoughts on that.
@Neil Hudelson: What are the precise symptoms, because I think I’m getting them occasionally. Specifically, I see the page but I can’t scroll down, and one of the ads on the right doesn’t appear.
This story is never going to go away. There will always be people that believe that Obama stole the election no matter the lack of evidence, logic or common sense. It’s just too painful to admit that someone you believed to be a bumbling fool got reelected.
Ta-Nehisi coates put it best: I win or you cheated. It’s the point that the GOP has reached. If they keep at it, it will be a long time before they win again.
Is it worth pointing out that in Virginia, where the State Board of Elections, which is responsible for all aspects of voter registration, voting, etc. on the state level is ran by two Republicans and one Democrat? This is due to an aspect of our election law where which ever party won the most recent gubernatorial election (the GOP) gets two people on the Board while the losing party (the Democrats) gets only one person.
In addition, we have local Electoral Boards which are appointed in a similar manner (winning party in last Gubernatorial election gets two people on the Board, losing party gets one).
To make a long story short, the local Electoral Boards of each and every jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as the State Board of Election, are made up of a majority of Republicans.
So, how exactly did those dirty sneaky liberals steal the election for Obama in Virginia?
Wow, just imagine how much more apoplectic the Right would be if Obama was the progressive that they imagine him to be?
All I can say is, don’t be surprised if the Republican House gets impeachment in their sights.
@al-Ameda:
It was in their sights even before the date of November 7th 2012. It’s only just begun to get serious with the Benghazi issue.
Everything and Anything related to the Obama administration will be thrown against the wall until something sticks. The only reason why impeachment was not at the top of republicans minds for the last four years, is because there was always a chance of Obama being a one-term president.
Now that he has been re-elected that safeguard is gone and republicans have nothing left other than impeachment to make sure Obama leaves with a negative legacy. (Other than the coming war with Iran, but that is a different subject)
Their plan to be the obstructionist party failed. Their plan to stall the economy so Obama was ousted this year, failed. All that is left is trying to make a mountain out of every molehill and hope they can pin anything illegal to Obama.
There is no way, IMO, that republicans in congress will learn anything from this election. They will keep on trucking the same as they have been since 2010, and impeachment will be at the top of their lists. It will be even more imperative than the debt, deficit or jobs for them.
At this point what do they have left to lose? What could they possibly do to make the GOP image even more negative? Shut down the government over taxes or the debt ceiling? Been there done that.
Impeach a popular president thanks in part to a wild witch hunt? Been there done that.
(Even after republicans in congress did all that in the 90’s, didn’t it take almost a decade fore the democratic party took back majorities in the congress?)
The next few years are going to be entertaining to say the least.
Of course Obama stole the election. Mittens had it bought and paid for.
I do not know if this un-skewed polls guy’s picture has ever graced this site before, and if it has I must have missed it. But, I just saw a picture of what this guy looks like and it hit me.
For as big of a tool and a hack that this guy is, there is a very simple explanation for his actions and motives.
Now bear with me here.
I don’t know if all of you here are familiar with Hustler magazine or it’s owner Larry Flynt(check out the movie the people vs. Larry Flynt, great movie), but from time to time he will interject himself into political matters. Usually with some satire (see Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, for a classic example) or even a big sum of money for information regarding a candidate. I believe this year he offered like a million dollars for Mitt’s tax returns(?).
Anyway, my theory is this. Flynt tired and bored of his usual political antics decided to spend a small portion of his fortune on having surgery. Surgery that would make him look 25 – 30 years younger. Not too different from his normal self, but different enough not be found out.
Seeing how much of a crank this Dean Chambers guy is, and for how much he looks like a younger Larry Flynt, the only plausible conclusion is this whole ordeal is an elaborate troll/prank perpetrated by Larry Flynt himself.
I mean has anyone ever seen Larry and Dean in the same place at the same time?
I don’t think so!
For reference: Dean: http://www.nationalconfidential.com/images/2012/09/dean-chambers.jpg
Larry: http://hotslot.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/larry_flynt.jpg
(I wonder if theOnion would pick this up? I am going to email them…
EDIT: Never-mind 🙁 They do not accept unsolicited work. )
@Stormy Dragon:
https://www.examiner.com/article/regarding-my-comments-about-nate-silver-s-appearance?cid=db_articles
I love his explanation for the Virginia results. It’s essentially the same as saying that Stanford beat Cal in this famous game because they were leading with little time left to play.
Unlike this improbable play, the results followed along with what was expected (as explained in the original post).
@Merit Man: “Polling locations with nary a single Romney vote and precincts with 90% voter turn-out, which is almost statistically impossible unless you started out with more voter registrations than voters. ”
Read the original post.
Or better, have a friend read and explain it.
@Stonetools: Obama was shut out at the county level in Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. White people committing fraud no doubt.
I looked at this sad excuse for a site. There is in fact a link to an actual apology to Silver about the comments on his appearance. Of course, within the apology is a big rationalization about why he did it.
I realize a blog has limitless space to fill, but with this??? The guy made a name for himself telling extremists in his party what they wanted to hear. It got him noticed. To continue being noticed he must make up new falsehoods. Why participate? Let him return to the obscurity he so richly deserves. Please.
@Mr. Replica:
Exactly right. Republicans play for keeps, Democrats do not.
I’m surprised by the poll results on this site, considering the tenor of the comments.