Posted on 11/04/2012 11:24:18 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
As I wrote last night, liberal analysts are right when they point out that the preponderance of state polls have greatly strengthened President Obama’s hopes for re-election. But a couple of the latest ones published this morning contradict that conviction, which caused New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to claim only stupid people think the election is not a cinch for Obama. One Democratic-leaning pollster has Romney ahead by one point in supposedly deep-blue Michigan, while a new Pennsylvania poll shows the race there deadlocked.
These may be outliers, but even a Nobel laureate (and, as the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto likes to say, “former Enron advisor”) like Krugman is smart enough to understand that if Romney wins Pennsylvania and Michigan, Obama has virtually no chance to get to 270 electoral votes. The point here is that while we are all rightly focused on who will win Ohio, the president’s hold on a number of states that were thought to be likely Democrat wins is far from secure. What’s happened in the last month since the Denver debate turned the race around is not just a surge of Republican strength in the South and the West but a surprising comeback for the GOP in the rust belt and the Midwest.
The Michigan poll is from the Democratic firm of Baydoun/Foster sponsored by WJBK Fox Channel 2 in Detroit, and has a sample that has a nine percent edge for the Democrats in terms of partisan identification. More tellingly, it is a fairly large number of respondents for a state poll — 1,913 likely voters — and a relatively low margin of error at 2.24 percent. Yet shockingly it shows Romney up by more than half a percentage point: 46.86 percent to 46.24 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
So the author is trying to be positive by admitting Romney win would be an upset? Wow, I feel so much better.
Presidential Mile High Club?
When Gallup shows that the advantage has swung 15 points to the GOP the writing is on the wall. Tuesday may be an early night.
Game. Set. Match.
OK. Thanks.
More of the weird phenomenon others have noted shows up in this article: the larger the sample size the more favorable the poll is to Romney. I know of no statistical basis for such a phenomenon, but we have to hope and pray it carries over to the ultimate poll with the largest sample size — the election on November 6.
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