Service with a smile …

posted at 1:43 pm on November 7, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

For those who are reading the comment threads today, there have been a number of calls for AP and me to apologize for “misleading” people about polling and the electorate.  I appended an apology to my earlier explanation, for basing my analysis of the polls on my assumption that 2008 was an anomaly and not a realignment, which formed the basis of all my poll analysis.  (I spent 20 years in customer service; apologies do not frighten me.)  However, as I said in the update, I had no intention of misleading anyone; I wrote what I truly thought to be correct.

Why was I convinced that the electorate had remained center-right even after 2008′s big Democratic wave?  Certainly, I didn’t like the outcome in 2008, but we had some data points between then and now that, while incomplete, pointed to solid movement to the right:

• 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia
• 2010 special election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts
• 2010 midterm elections with a 72-year record shift in the House to the GOP
• 2011-12 recall elections in Wisconsin

My analysis certainly proved to be wrong, while the polls turned out to get the nature of the electorate correct. I do apologize for missing this by as much as I did, without hesitation.  However it turned out last night, though, those assumptions were not irrational considering the elections that took place between November 2008 and November 2012, and my erroneous assumptions were not intended to deceive.

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