One of the newer wingnut memes going around the net and the usual nitwits on talk radio (see the link within the quote) is that the polling data that shows President Obama with a growing lead over Mitt Romney is skewed towards Obama because it oversamples Democrats.

Well…not really:

Republicans have taken their complaints about media polls allegedly favoring Democrats a step further this morning, embracing an obscure new polling website that re-engineers public polls to add more Republicans to their samples, and which gives Republican Mitt Romney a wide lead.

Some Romney supporters have long complained that public polls suggest higher Democratic turnout, and lower Republican turnout, than they think is likely this year. Pollsters have replied that their samples are dictated by what poll respondents themselves say. (This exchangebetween Hugh Hewitt and Lee Miringoff is illustrative of the argument.)

Dean Chambers, a blogger on examiner.com who writes from his home in Duffield, Virginia, took that complaint a step further — producing wide Romney leads far beyond what the Republican’s campaign or Republican pollsters have suggested is the case

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Even the founder of Rasmussen Reports, whose surveys often show higher Republican numbers, cast doubt on Chambers’ methods: Scott Rasmussen told BuzzFeed in an e-mail that “you cannot compare partisan weighting from one polling firm to another.”

“Different firms ask about partisan affiliation in different ways,” explained Rasmussen. “Some ask how you are registered. Some ask what you consider yourselves. Some push for leaners, others do not. Some ask it at the beginning of a survey which provides a more stable response while others ask it at the end.”

This article from Reason explains why the notion of “oversampling of Democrats” doesn’t hold much water.

There’s a whole lotta stupid goin on!