Faith isn't for campaigns. It's for churches.

It is fascinating to hear Romney insiders refer to the candidate as "shellshocked" at his loss:

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks - not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan - bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time - poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats - and that would translate into votes for Romney.

As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Why fascinating? Because there was so much data available from independent sources that contradicted everything the Romney campaign was telling itself. For instance, read my previous post about the last Marquette poll, or this snippet that I posted elsewhere the day before the election:

Yesterday's CNN poll has Romney winning "independent" voters by 24 points, but Obama winning "moderate" voters by 21 points.

The same poll shows the favorability rating for the Democratic Party at -20 for independents and +28 for moderates. For the Republican Party? +6 for independents, -25 for moderates.

So what does that tell us? That very likely, many people who are identifying as independent are not actually moderate. They're conservatives who are choosing, for one reason or another, to not identify as Republicans.

The press, unfortunately, all too often conflates the words "independent" and "moderate" when in reality, independent voters are often not moderate at all. Partisan identification swings quite a bit and is influenced by lots of factors, including the popularity of party leaders. Go to the average Tea Party rally and you'll find lots of conservatives who don't identify as Republican. But when push comes to shove, they're going to vote Republican nearly 100% of the time. They're not independent, even if they think they are.

Ideological identification, however, has been relatively constant over the last 20 years. About 40% of the electorate identifies as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 20% as liberal.

What does all of that mean? If ideological identification hasn't changed between 2010 and 2012, Barack Obama probably wins - because the polling at large is weighting accurately for ideological identification.

There's only one logical conclusion to reach and yet everyone in the Romney campaign appears to have missed it. I don't have a Ph.D. in statistics or a fancy election model. But any logical person with internet access could find the same data and would draw the same conclusion. That still makes me smarter than Romney's pollster Neil Newhouse, and the rest of the his gang that blew millions on creating and justifying a model in which Romney was ahead. I mean, look at the size of those rallies! Romney couldn't be behind, could he? Inconceivable!

Why did they miss it? Because they actively chose to deny reality.

Rather than confront the data that actually exists (whether it's CATO pointing out the economic benefits of illegal immigration or scientists around the world acknowledging SOME human role in global warming), today's conservatives are all too happy to construct a parallel universe and deny anything that doesn't fit into their view of the world.

The Romney campaign was no different. It was the political equivalent of denying evolution, or arguing that dinosaurs never existed or that the earth is 6,000 years old. It was the Creation Museum of presidential campaigns; a place where those in denial of science (in this case, math) could seek refuge from a world that looks at them with increasing skepticism.

For those of you who supported Romney, with your time, your money, or your vote, I feel bad for you. You deserved a candidate and a campaign that used real data rather than manufacturing data to support a predetermined outcome. Perhaps the Romney campaign could've won if it would've employed an intelligent strategy over the last three weeks, instead of patting itself on the back for a job well done and embarking on a premature multi-state victory tour.

Faith isn't for campaigns. It's for churches.