Well, this is going to make things a little awkward over at Republican Fox News headquarters.

Fox Nation has a big story about “college-aged Republicans” supposedly favoring Mitt Romney. Given that Romney is just about the only potential GOP presidential candidate not currently working for Fox, that article can't be too popular around the ol' Fox water cooler. What's worse is that it's a completely baseless claim.

The Fox Nation article is an excerpt of a Student Free Press Association write-up of a poll conducted by Harvard's Institute of Politics. But neither the SFPA article nor Harvard's press release or executive summary say anything about anyone “leaning towards Romney.” (The SFPA article is headlined “College-aged Republicans say Romney, others in the mix for 2012.” But that doesn't mean college-aged Republicans are leaning toward Romney, any more than “Knicks, Lakers play tonight” means the Knicks are winning.) And the actual poll results find that Romney doesn't do any better against President Obama than Fox News' Sarah Palin does -- both lose by 25 points. (Fox's Newt Gingrich loses by 30.) So Fox took a poll in which Palin fares just as well as Romney and turns it into a promotional vehicle for Romney, suggesting that young voters prefer him to Palin.

If I worked at Fox Nation, I'd avoid Palin's Facebook page for the next few days.