Not every Republican pollster finds fault with the publicly-available surveys. Dan Judy, vice president of North Star Opinion Research in Alexandria, Va., told National Journal, "A lot of the media organizations this cycle seem to have gotten better."
"Most of the media polls are good, professional polls," Judy added, "in terms of making sure that the way their samples are constructed are fairly consistent."
But the GOP narrative that most public surveys are biased endures. On Monday, the news website Buzzfeed interviewed a Virginia-based blogger who re-weights public polls to reflect the partisan trends reported by automated pollster Rasmussen Reports. Dean Chambers, the blogger, then presents the adjusted data in charts on his website, unskewedpolls.com.
As of late Monday, Chambers' website claimed that an average of polls conducted since Labor Day show Mitt Romney leading Obama, 52 percent to 44 percent. The website and its findings were trumpeted on the Drudge Report, the conservative-leaning news-aggregation site that has tended to highlight polls more favorable to Romney and less favorable to the president.
The pollsters continue to stand by their results, but the complaints are nevertheless getting through. Marist's Miringoff, for instance, was lambasted by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier this month over a poll in Hewitt's native Ohio that the radio jock deemed "biased" for its 10-point party-ID advantage for Democrats. Miringoff admitted to National Journal that he is now taking note of the party-identification results in the polls he is conducting.
"I look at our party-ID spread because I want to anticipate the reaction," he said. He added: "I guess it makes for good pundit sport at this point."
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