The pollster as genius or goat: It depends upon who wins

The man at the heart of the polling frenzy

By: Maggie Haberman and Emily Schultheis, Politico.com
November 4, 2012 05:27 PM EST

Neil Newhouse, Mitt Romney’s campaign pollster, suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar place — out on a limb.

The survey-taker, who helped build Public Opinion Strategies into the largest Republican polling firm and has a solid reputation among operatives and colleagues, is growing increasingly vocal with reporters and Romney supporters in the campaign’s closing days about what he sees as examples of flawed public polling, and his sense of the race — particularly in Ohio — as basically even.

Newhouse is not known for seeking attention, but through the course of the presidential campaign, his profile has risen. He has been part of some public state-of-the-race calls, and is a frequent fixture on calls and in conversations with Romney surrogates and donors, telling GOP elites in one discussion last week that a Quinnipiac University survey with the New York Times and CBS was “crap.” (Newhouse said he didn’t recall using that word.)

Having decamped from Washington to Boston to be part of the campaign last year, Newhouse has gotten comparatively less attention than some of Romney’s high command, but he’s attained more of a public — and defensive — posture in the race’s last stages than President Barack Obama’s pollster Joel Benenson.

(More here.)