Polling isn't as skewed as some Republicans think. (standupamericaus.org)

In his article, Tyler regurgitated a lot of the common Republican talking points. He asserted that the “liberal media” was in the tank for Obama, that they were willing to manipulate polling data to swing the election, and that every assessment of the race that wasn’t done by Republicans was wrong.

I’m not looking to get into a grandiose ideological debate with Mr. Talgo. I’ve been one of the foremost advocates for including more conservative voices in Neon Tommy’s opinion section. I personally reached out to the College Republicans in search of right-leaning writers, and I think that having a variety of views to present is essential to having a healthy democratic dialogue. I also think that Mr. Talgo is a talented writer, and clearly a very intelligent person.

But his hostility toward all non-conservative voices has become an all-too common sentiment among conservative thinkers, and it merits a response. Let’s start that response with the facts about the situation at hand.

Fact: In the most recent cycle of federal elections, Rasmussen (the pollster that Mr. Talgo cites as the only reliable source) grossly overestimated the standing of Republican candidates. Nate Silver has has catalogued that Rasmussen overestimated Republican support in 55 races during the 2010 election cycle. That means that over half the polls they issued in the lead up to Election Day 2010 were biased toward Republicans.

Fact: Republican news outlets conducted a number of the polls that Mr. Talgo lampoons in his article. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that is “skewed towards Obama” is partially conducted by an organization owned by Rupert Murdoch (yes, the guy who owns Fox News). Accusing the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch of not supporting Republicans is like accusing the Pope of being anti-Catholic; its absurd.

Speaking of Fox News, their polls seem to also display the “mainstream media bias” that Mr. Talgo writes about. Their most recent poll has Obama leading by seven points in Ohio and Virginia and by five points in Florida. This is the same Fox News that has accused the President of “declaring war on marriage” (and the same Fox News Obama stopped talking to because he didn’t think he declared any such thing). It is crazy to assert that they have a pro-Obama bias.

Fact: The polls that are most favorable to Romney are the ones being tampered with. Mr. Talgo’s biggest beef with non-Republican polls is that they garner responses from a larger number of Democrats than Republicans. But he never stops to ponder why random-digit dialing reaps more Democratic responses than Republican ones. The logical answer (and the one confirmed by the most reliable data) shows that there simply are more Democrats than there are Republicans. Does Mr. Talgo think that the major polling entities have magic phones that only dial Democrats? Rasmussen literally tampers with their data in order to factor in the number of Republican responses “they think” there should be. That doesn’t sound all that scientific to me.

Fact: Important conservative commentators agree that Mitt Romney is running a weak campaign. Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter and a long-time advocate of conservative causes, penned a column about Romney’s inept campaign just last week. David Brooks, former editor of the Weekly Standard (a fervently conservative publication) made similar comments in response to Romney’s “47 percent" video. Most of the prominent members of Romney's own party even refused to back him after his ill-timed and inaccurate criticism of Obama’s Libya response. Clearly Democrats are not the only ones who think Romney is behind right now.

These are only a few of the arguments that can be made to refute the claim that major polling outlets are biased toward Obama. But they do disprove a number of the arguments Mr. Talgo, and the people he’s citing, are making.

Mr. Talgo is entitled to his own opinions, but he is not entitled to his own facts. He is more than welcome to believe that major news organizations, the government, Hollywood, the public school system, every college in America and everyone who doesn’t swear allegiance to an anti-government agenda is against conservatives. But he doesn’t get to make up his own statistics and data to support his suspicions.

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Editor's Note: Read Tyler Talgo's article, "Skewed Polls Actually Show That Romney Is Winning," here.