Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, two former speechwriters for President George W. Bush, are out with a new article for Commentary on saving the Republican Party. In the course of making the generally sound point that Republicans need to do a better job appealing to middle-income Americans, the authors misleadingly cite exit poll data from the 2012 election.

The reason I raise this issue is that the statistic they distort is one that’s come up repeatedly in post-election articles as well as informal discussions I’ve attended on the GOP’s future, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the most widely misunderstood question in the 2012 exit polls.