Posted on 05/10/2012 9:52:29 AM PDT by neverdem
Just as the political air is filled with talk of the inevitability of Barack Obama’s reelection — we are told that the kids at his Chicago headquarters are brimming with confidence — in come some poll numbers showing him behind.
Not by anything statistically significant, mind you. But when you get the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls and the Politico/George Washington University Battleground poll all showing Mitt Romney leading Obama by one point, an Obama victory seems far from inevitable.
These results came in at a time when the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls shows 50 percent expressing favorable feelings about Obama and only 37 percent saying the same about Romney.
Some analysts still claim Obama has a lock on the Electoral College. They look at his 365–173 margin in the Electoral College in 2008 and argue that Romney will have trouble peeling enough states away.
The reapportionment of House seats following the 2010 census has whittled Obama’s 2008 margin down to 359–179, and Obama does not own all those electoral votes. No one expects him to carry Indiana again. In “swing states,” he must win in a political climate where voters know much more about him than last time.
In 2008, Obama won 53 percent of the vote, the highest percentage for any Democratic nominee in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Now he’s averaging 46 percent in recent polls.
That’s much closer to the 45 percent that Democratic candidates won in elections to the House in 2010. And in the last three presidential elections, the winning candidate has won the same percentage (or within 1 percent) as his party’s percentage in House elections two years before.
Obama had a popular-vote margin of 7 percent in 2008. But Republicans had a margin of 7 percent in the popular vote for the House in 2010. If you tote up the electoral votes in the states they carried, you find them with a 351–184 edge over Democrats (the remaining three in the District of Columbia are obviously Democratic).
When you look at target states, you see the same picture. Take Gallup’s twelve swing states, which in the organization’s most recent survey together favored Obama over Romney by 47 to 45 percent. That’s a lot less than the 53 to 45 percent by which he carried them four years ago.
In recent state-by-state polling, Obama leads in all twelve but averages more than 50 percent only in New Mexico and Wisconsin. And in all twelve he’s polling less than the percentage he won in 2008.
There are big drop-offs in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where Obama owed his victory to large margins among affluent suburbanites — Mitt Romney’s strongest demographic in the primaries.
His smallest drop-off is in North Carolina, which he carried only 50 to 49 percent but where voters seem sharply polarized. It’s a particular target for Obama, who chose Charlotte as the site of the Democratic National Convention.
Romney is running even in recent Florida polls, and less than five points behind in Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia — within striking distance. If he wins them all plus safe Republican states, he’ll be elected.
That’s without Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with 66 electoral votes in all, which could conceivably be within Romney’s reach.
Democrats hope to expand the field to Arizona, with eleven electoral votes, and Republicans hope to expand it to New Jersey, with 14. Those hopes may look dim now, but at this point in 2008 few expected Obama to carry North Carolina or Indiana.
The bottom line is that at this point Obama doesn’t have an Electoral College lock. Neither does Romney. The numbers tell us that this election is up for grabs.
The Obama campaign has prepared for a long, hard slog through the target states. The Romney campaign is getting prepared for the same.
It’s what the political press expects and has tried to prepare for. We feel we have a pretty good sense of the relevant terrain.
But in politics there are sometimes surprises, unanticipated changes, developments that seem obvious in retrospect but were wholly unexpected before they happened. The long, hard slog is the likeliest scenario for 2012. But in a future column I will sketch some alternative possibilities.
— Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner © 2012 The Washington Examiner
after events this week, I think obama is going to have some difficulty in both Wisconsin, and North Carolina....and if Colorado Springs shows up to vote against obama, he will have a difficult time there, as well.
And IF all of that happens, all of a sudden, obama may well lose....
“an Obama victory seems far from inevitable...”
Reality is a bitch!
From Barone’s mouth to God’s ears! No second term for Obama. Get him the hell out!
Barone, Rothenberg and Cook. Ignore them at your own peril.
Barone is the best.
But I saw another article today that indicates that the media thinks that Obama has it in the bag already. So we’ll see...
I repeat: Barone is the best and knows his business better than anyone.
The MSM can eat dog crap.
Thank the teachers of America for dumbing down a few generations of children who are now voting age. The level of ignorance of the typical 20-somethings, especially females, IS STAGGERING. Ask them who “Ahmadinejad” is and you get ‘deer in the headlights’. Ask them what they think of ‘Fast & Furious’ and they’ll tell you “Oh yeah that was a movie, right?”. Ask about Biden and they say “Who”? Ask about ‘Keystone XL’ and they’ll ask you if that’s a new phone. They know nothing of the Muslim Brotherhood’s intentions, Holder suing our States or Obama’s illegal involvement in Solyndra, or his falsification of the BP oil spill commission report or that Elena Kagan is a devout communist or that Obama is slowly strangling America and abolishing our free-market, capitalist republic.
The swing states are PA, OH, MI, WI, IA, MN, NV, CO and NM. That makes the leans Romney 252 v. Obama 186.
This country is doomed.
It is as it always was, right track v. wrong track numbers. If those numbers are bad, then it is not good news for the incumbent party, PERIOD. Those numbers are not turning around between now and November due to the policies of the ONE.
In the meantime, the ONE and has cronies in the MSM are trying and will continue to try the following: 1)make it as if the Republicans are the incumbent party based on control of the House; 2) make it as if things are going just peachy and spin, spin, spin every piece of bad news as if it was really terrific news; and 3) make the election about every issue other than the economy, i.e. gay marriage, race, war on women, etc.
In my opinion, I do not think all the smoke and mirrors in the world are going to change the reality on the ground. People are hurting and like in every other election they are going to take it out on the incumbent POTUS and his party.
Quote: “But I saw another article today that indicates that the media thinks that Obama has it in the bag already.”
What a shock, two days after the ONE nearly losing an uncontested primary to Al Capone the MSM is out there again saying, in effect, “ignore that man behind the curtain.”
Fortunately, "Conventional Wisdom" is usually pretty stupid.
Barone knows the grass roots of voting better than anyone else in the country. There is no slant to his predictions.
Yes, he’s tops in his field. He has even discussed individual precincts. LOL
You said it best in tagline:
("Journalism is dead. All news is suspect." - Noamie)
The MSM has been in the bag for Obama since 2007; not surprising they'll write anything to make it seem he's inevitable.
Does anyone with any kind of reputation work at Pravda on the Patomac anymore?
It seems that everyone has left for the Wash-Examiner or the Wash-Times. Seems like Pravda has fired everyone who was in the same time zone of sanity.
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