I don’t mean to single out Marist. It’s representative of most of the media polls showing the president on track for re-election.

So why are these polls skewing so far left? Conservative conspiracy theories tying the polls to mainstream media bias fail to acknowledge the need for pollsters to retain professional credibility. They can’t do that if they are consistently making bad predictions. I think the problem is that pollsters are so focused with ensuring that Democratic-leaning groups — especially minorities — are fairly represented in their polls that they’re failing to ensure that Republican-leaning groups are also fairly represented in their polls.

Of course, it’s possible that the pollsters are right. Perhaps minority voters will turn out in even higher numbers in 2012 than they did in 2008. Maybe Republicans who are not sold on Mitt Romney will stay home. If that’s the case, President Obama really will cruise to re-election.