Will RAS release this tracking poll Monday and Tuesday?
I do agree when you look at the internals, that the Hurricane did have some impact last week. Whether it was a shift/bounce, hard to tell. But just the fact the election was off the front page for 5 days, impacts polling perceptions.
In the end, I cannot see Obama getting a lasting impact from the hurricane. This has always been an election about the economy and the role of government. That did not change last week.
Romney trending back up with independents is very good to see. He definitely has the enthusiasm gap. Both based on polling and anecdotal evidence like crowd sizes and campaign messages. The fact that Romney is even close in PA, MN, MI, & WI tells me this race has to be trending his way. And that the top line polls are not picking it up.
Also, Romney has closed or taken the lead in early voting in several swing states compared to 2008. In OH alone, there is a flip of 263k early votes from 2008 to 2012. Obama won OH by 262k. And McCain actually won election day in OH by 60k votes. Even Axelrod this morning didn’t try and dispute the numbers of Fox News Sunday.
In the end, Romney will win Independents. Obama won them by 8 in 2008. So if Romney even wins them by 8 (which is on the low side based on all the polling), they I can’t see him losing the election. Gallup/Pew/RAS have all released Party ID polls in the last week, showing anywhere from a 12-15 point Party ID shift from D to R since 2008. And these are large sample polls with a MOE of 1% (Gallup was over 9,000 respondents).
And finally, Romney will win because he has the enthusiasm gap. Obama had it in 2008, but Romney is drawing crowds 10x Obama in the same states this time. We saw what happened in 2010, and nothing has changed that anger and frustration the last 2 years. In fact, a vast part of the country is even more frustrated than in 2010. The economy is actually going in reverse the last 18 months. And the USSC upheld Obamacare.
Romney is a businessman and has run a well organized and strategic campaign. I am confident his GOTV efforts will carry the day on Tuesday. (we have already seen it in the early voting).
Post 26 is why I believe we will win Tuesday.
Right. But not surprised that CiC bunkum would help some of his base stragglers home, at all. The key is what my astute colleagues are saying, no way does GOP run under 95%.
So he must be getting too much noise in his data (or simply not enough GOP response), and thusly on shifting ground D+~n.