they didn't ignore the data, they had bad data
the last couple of decades has seen the rise of conservative news sources. which is good for morale. you fudge the truth a little, make things look rosier than they really are, and you galvanize your base
the problem is when you start believing your own bullshit
romney was fed the fudges the conservative echo chamber feeds itself, and was kept in the dark. so they were overconfident
there's a respected solid analyst called nate silver at the new york times, who is very good at forecasting elections with his methods
he called the election early, in september, for obama
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n...
this analysis was pilloried on the right as a propaganda. even though he was just applying cold hard analysis
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
when in fact, the right was the one creating propaganda, and silver called them out on it:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
the decision makers around romney chose to ignore cold analysis as liberal propaganda. romney had a chance to buckle down and maybe do something with his message in october and maybe eke out a win
but just look at rove on election night: he couldn't believe the news about ohio. because the right wing media echo chamber was operating on its own bullshit, and kneejerk rejecting bad news as liberal propaganda
again, conservative media is great for the morale of the average conservative voter. but when the conservative media is depended upon by the decision makers on the right, the right loses, because decisions based on lies are bad, losing decisions