Dean Chambers, the man who garnered praise from the right and notoriety on the left for his "Unskewed Polling" site, admitted today that his method was flawed.
"Nate Silver was right, and I was wrong," Chambers said in a phone interview.
Chambers' method of "unskewing" polls involved re-weighting the sample to match what he believed the electorate would look like, in terms of party identification. He thought the electorate would lean more Republican when mainstream pollsters routinely found samples that leaned Democratic.
But as it turned out, the pollsters were right — self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 6% in election exit polls.
"I think it was much more in the Democratic direction than most people predicted," Chambers said. "But those assumptions — my assumptions — were wrong."
Chambers' official Electoral College prediction ended up being much more tame than other conservatives, including Dick Morris. Chambers predicted Romney would win 275 electoral votes to Obama's 263.
But he said he probably won't go back to "unskewing" polls next time. He actually thinks conservative-leaning pollsters like Scott Rasmussen have a lot more explaining to do.
"He has lost a lot of credibility, as far as I'm concerned," Chambers said. "He did a lot of surveys. A lot of those surveys were wrong."
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