Father Of Unskewing Movement Says He Made The Pollsters Honest

With better numbers for Romney, former critics of big polling shops have stayed quiet. Forget the debates: Chambers takes credit.

Mitt Romney's rise in the polls has produced conservative elation and, in some quarters, rather exotic explanations of the sources of Romney's rise.

Indeed, when the Pew Research Center said Tuesday that Romney was leading President Obama by 4 percentage points among likely voters, conservatives were quick to embrace the new numbers. The national polling unit that would have been branded last month as "skewed," was evidence this morning of a strong Romney rally, and some in the movement noted the change of mood with amusement.

"What are out formerly disgusting and now beloved polls telling us this morning?" tweeted the author David Limbaugh, Rush's brother, Wednesday morning.

But Dean Chambers, the founder of the movement to unskew, says this isn't just conservatives reversing the new numbers. The pollsters are actually becoming less skewed and more honest, he says — and the blogger is taking much of the credit.

"I exposed the polls for being very inaccurate," Chambers told BuzzFeed. "I showed Romney leading in August and September when everyone thought Obama was ahead. Now pollsters are skewing less."

On his website, unskewedpolls.com, Chambers did not alter, or re-weight, the new Pew poll at all. The poll is listed in his tracking table as having "0 Skew" — a first for the website.

Chambers attributes Romney's rise in the polls to less unskewing — to taking a larger Republican sample size — and also to Romney's solid debate performance. Pew says that it adjusted its Republican sample size because more voters are now identifying as Republicans, but Chambers dismisses that claim.

"I'm not buying that," he said. "I think they polled a more balanced sample for the sake of being accurate. We're getting closer to the election, and they're all gonna claim their reputaiton based on their numbers in October."

"I predicted this would happen," Chambers said, who said he never believed any of the polls up until this week. "This so-called lead by Obama — I don't think it ever really existed. It was an illusion and it was created by the skewed polls."

Chambers expects to see larger Republican sample sizes in the four remaining weeks of the election. "The last CNN poll was only seven or eight points skewed in favor of Democrats, and the next CNN poll will probably be skewed even less," he said.

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