Foul Ball: "All polls have a liberal bias...including our own here at Fox"

If you've noticed a shift in narrative recently from the Romney campaign and Fox News, it's probably because:

1. The Romney campaign and Fox News want to talk about anything but Mitt Romney's comments on the 47%.
2. The 47% comments appear to be as damaging in the opinion of voters as the media portrays them to be, leading to Mitt Romney losing in major polls nationally and in most swing states.
3. Since he is losing in polls, the Romney campaign is afraid of losing fundraising dollars as financial backers begin to perceive the campaign as a lost cause, thus re-focusing their attention and dollars to down-ballot races.

So what do you do if you're the Romney campaign and Fox News? Blame the polls! A few days ago, Romney said, "at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down." Someone should tell Mitt Romney that early voting has begun, and according to the Washington Post, people in 34 states and the District of Columbia can vote early. Fox News takes this a step further, saying that "the polls are misleading" (more on their reasoning in a minute). If you haven't noticed, there are many problems with trusting Fox News as a credible media source, but that problem becomes more significant when you consider where the "fair and balanced" network finds people to provide "news and analysis" for this election cycle:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now, it's true that Rachel Maddow can sometimes be loud and overbearing. It's also true that Obama campaign advisers and staffers appear on cable news channels like MSNBC all the time. But there is a significant distinction between appearing on these channels and speaking for the campaign compared to being a paid contributor by the network while also working for the campaign. It's not a coincidence that the content provided on Fox News often aligns with the rhetoric coming from the Romney campaign, and now you know why.

Going back to the uproar over the alleged bias in polling, the Fox News opinion I cited earlier in this post puts emphasis on a website called unskewedpolls.com by conservative blogger Dean Chambers. Chambers thought the major national polls "just didn't look right" and re-weighted the polls to correct the bias. So he's going to show us how skewed the polls are by skewing the polls himself? Stephen Colbert poked fun at the issue last night on The Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The other issue with the Fox News opinion that the polls are skewed is the person they are talking to at the Romney campaign that would help "confirm" their assertion: Romney pollster Neil Newhouse. In a recent interview cited by the Fox News opinion, he said, "I don’t think [the polls] reflect the composition of what 2012 is going to look like." On its own, that might seem like a sound statement that any campaign pollster might say when their team is losing, which is fine. However, this is the same Neil Newhouse who said "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." I'm not going to trust anything coming from Neil Newhouse, because if he won't let facts get in the way of the Romney campaign, as a pollster for the campaign, would he let facts get in the way of how he polls for them?

The latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls shows Obama up 4.1% (48.7%-41.6%). That average includes a Fox News poll from 9/24-9/26 that has Obama up 5% (48%-43%). So to recap, all the polls have a liberal bias, including those left-wing crazies at Fox News! To top it off, because you can't make this stuff up (though I'm sure Neil Newhouse would find a way), the latest UnSkewedPolls average has Romney up 7.4% on Obama (51.5% Romney-44.1% Obama), with the results of every "re-weighted" poll showing Romney ahead - except for the one done by Fox News. Finally, proof that Fox News is fair and balanced.