…the real question is who the Washington Post and ABC News think they’re fooling by running a poll with a sample giving Obama a built-in 10-point edge.

32 D, 22 R and 38 I.

Does anybody really believe that only 22 percent of the electorate in November will be Republican?

For those who do, be advised – you have no idea what you’re talking about.

In 2008, which was the largest Democrat advantage in recent times, the split was 39/32/29. In 2010 for the midterms it was 35/35/30. By any estimation you’d have to figure this fall’s electorate would look more like 2010 than 2008.

And yet this poll undersamples Republicans by 10 percent compared to 2008. Why on earth would anybody think doing so would produce a credible result?

That’s an unanswered question. But Hot Air notes that whatever the answer, this undersampling Republicans is a bad habit of the poll in question…

Take a close look at the Republican representation in WaPo/ABC polls this year. Starting in January, that has been 25%, 23%, 27%, 23%, and now 22%.  The pollster seems incapable of finding a representative number of Republicans for this poll series.  Perhaps that should give the two news organizations involved a hint about finding a new pollster.

So we know that the poll is rigged in Obama’s favor, whether intentionally or because the pollster can’t find a good list of Republican voters to call. And this poll is of registered voters rather than likely voters, which means it both skews to the Democrat and it’s less reliable. But given that, here’s what they came up with – a lot of numbers the Obama camp can’t be too fired up about…

• Obama leads Romney, 49-46 among the registered voters. Within the margin of error despite a built-in 10-point lead. He leads Romney 49-45 among the total sample.
• Obama’s underwater on approval rating, 47-49.
• He’s very much underwater on the economy, 42-55.
• Only 48 percent of Obama’s voters are “very enthusiastic” about voting for him, with 43 percent “somewhat enthusiastic.” That’s better than the number for Romney (23 and 50), but then Obama didn’t have a primary to get beat up in. The poll didn’t ask whether respondents are very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting AGAINST Obama or Romney.
•  52 percent of the poll said the economy was the most important issue in the campaign.
• How good is the economy? 1 percent said excellent, 16 percent good. The other 83 percent said not so good or poor.
• 49 percent blame Bush for the economy, 34 percent blame Obama. This after three years and change of Obama blaming Bush for everything, and with a sample undersampling Republicans by at least 10 percent.
• Romney beats Obama on who would handle the economy better, 47-46, though Obama leads Romney on who would create more jobs, 47-44. No idea what that means.

There are some other results, but they’re obviously colored by the lefty slant of the poll sample.

We talked about the CBS/New York Times poll last week which showed something relatively similar; it had a sample that was skewed to the Democrats as well and yet generated lousy numbers for the president.

What we’d like to see is a poll built on a sample that mirrors the 2010 electorate. Sure, that was a midterm election and as such it probably had a different turnout model than you could expect with Obama on the ballot – but it was also the most recent sample of voter preferences, and little has changed economically or otherwise since then with respect to the public’s perception of what’s going on in Washington.

With such a sample – or even with a sample that mirrors the 2008 election – Romney is leading Obama, and probably by a substantial margin. But the mainstream media refuses to show such a poll.

Wonder why that is.