post mortems

“There were just too many damn Democrats,” the pollster said.  This anonymous statement from a Republican pollster is part of a lengthy analysis by Politico of why so many polls were wrong, anticipating a Romney win over Obama. The consensus seems to be that the adjustments made to the raw polling data assumed a whiter and older and more Republican electorate than what actually showed up at ballot time.

Another Republican regretted that his team just didn't believe the openly declared Obama strategy:

Another Republican fumed at the party’s unwillingness to heed the Obama campaign’s publicly broadcast intentions to expand the 2012 electorate and keep minority and youth turnout high.
“For a year, they were saying in their YouTube videos and memos, ‘This is what we’re going to do, we’re going to turn all these people out,’ ” the Republican said. “They told us exactly what they were going to do and we just didn’t believe it.

Still another explanation is that Republicans were caught in their own "media cocoon."