The fury of wingnuts scorned

I'm becoming more convinced than ever that Tuesday and Wednesday will bring the biggest meltdown since Fukushima.  Losing an election is usually disappointing, sometimes maddening -- but with modern polling, very often the side that loses at least had some awareness that defeat was coming.  This time, based on what I'm seeing on the right-wing sites I read semi-regularly (Hot Air, RedState, and Race42012), there is almost no such awareness in advance.  Republicans seem convinced that they're going to win.

How sure am I that they're wrong?  Well, nothing is certain, but most of the polls show Obama ahead in most of the swing states.  As of this morning Nate Silver puts Obama's chance of winning at 83.7%.  Polls of the Senate races suggest that our majority will actually increase.  Yes, defeat is still possible, but a lot of very surprising things would have to happen to bring it about.

But the right-wingers don't see it that way.  They think the polls are all wrong because high levels of Democratic party ID reveal some nefarious "skewing".  They think there's still a huge enthusiasm gap in their favor.  They point to Romney's lead among independents.  They think voters will turn against Obama because he mishandled the Benghazi attack (most of the alleged mishandling has been debunked, but that doesn't penetrate the sealed Drudge / Fox / Limbaugh / etc. fake-media bubble).  They think the public is finally realizing that Obama is Muslim, communist, stupid, anti-American, gay, Kenyan, or some combination of those.

In fact, if the actual result deviates from the consensus of polls, it's more likely to be in our favor.  A lot of polls don't include cell phones, and people who have only cell phones and no land lines are disproportionately young, black, and Hispanic -- groups that lean strongly Democratic.  There's evidence that polls systematically under-sample Hispanics in the Southwest, thus under-estimating Democratic support (Reid won his 2010 Nevada race by six points when polls showed him losing) -- so our party should do better than expected in Nevada and Colorado, and even Arizona may bring some surprises.  There could be an Obama / Senate landslide (in fact, with polls showing Florida back in play, an Obama Electoral-College landslide is possible even without those factors).

I've seen quite a few right-wingers salivating in anticipation of visiting liberal blogs and sites on November 7th to gloat.  They expect to see Nate Silver, most pollsters, and all the other actual experts who are predicting a Democratic win, become utterly discredited and disappear -- vindicating the wingnut fake alternate reality which they and their "media" have cobbled together around themselves.

They're in for a terrible, harsh, cold shock, and many of them aren't going to take it well.  Some of them are going to be enraged.  Some will be looking for someone or something to vent their fury at.

On Wednesday, watch your back.