PPP's Tom Jensen: Republican polling analysts are 'morons'

And the polling outfit that had as good a performance as any was one that may have sparked even more pre-election conservative ire than Silver. Public Policy Polling, a small polling firm in North Carolina, conducted a whopping 255 public polls in 2012, and it often seemed like polling skeptics (and even other pollsters) had a bone to pick with each one. This was partly because PPP uses automated dialers. It was also because PPP is a Democratic polling firm. But when the results came in, PPP’s polls had called all 50 states correctly in the presidential race (assuming Florida ultimately goes to Obama), every Senate race, and every important ballot initiative. Its private polling — like the 23 surveys it did of Kentucky legislative races for one client — was similarly on the mark.

When I talked to Tom Jensen, PPP’s director, this morning, he was understandably in the mood to gloat. “These supposed polling experts on the conservative side are morons,” Jensen crowed. “Jay Cost” — the Weekly Standard’s polling expert who’d waged a number-crunching war against PPP — “is an idiot.”