Independent Independents and Republican Independents

This is interesting. From the looks of things, Romney's campaign staff drew confidence from their lead among "Independents" when they were really just holding onto their somewhat faithless base.

You probably heard many times over the last few months that Romney was kicking Obama’s butt among independents and you just couldn’t lose independent by that much (as Obama seemed to be) and win. But a very cursory look at partisan identification trends over the last few years showed a clear reason was this was not the case. As I explained in a post on October 31st, ‘independents’ had changed a lot over the last five years. A large number of Republican voters had ceased to identify themselves as “Republicans” and reclassified themselves as “independents” despite maintaining the same conservative ideological stance or in some cases becoming even more conservative.

Marshall wonders whether or not the Romney staffers claiming to have been blindsided by this are lying.  Maybe they are.  I don't think it matters, though.  They had a job to do.  Not hard to figure that anyone who signs on to try to get Mitt Romney elected President is either an impossibly cynical mercenary or tragically self-deluded. 

Probably some of both in the mix.  But if you need help visualizing the latter, you can always try here.