Consensus of Polls Shows Romney Up in Florida

The New York Times ^ | January 28, 2012, 9:43 pm | NATE SILVER

[Mariner]

You can find pretty much every species of poll in Florida right now.

There are traditional polls and automated polls, Internet polls and partisan polls, academic polls and commercial polls.

There are polls where voters checked a box. There are polls that were reported on Fox.

There are polls that called the voter’s house. There are polls where voters clicked a mouse.

Though the numbers were here and there, the outcome was the same everywhere.

Unless there is a major glitch, Mitt Romney will beat Newt Gingrich.

---Break---

Instead, if there is a candidate with upside potential in Florida, it might be Rick Santorum. The most recent polls have shown better results for him, and he now is projected to 15 percent of the vote, up from 11 percent earlier this week.

[ansel12]

That is some fine art.

[Jane Long]

NY Slimes poll "report"?

NO THANKS!

[TexasFreeper2009]

for the entire election up to about a week or two before Iowa Santorum polled 2% or so, which means nearly all his supporters now supported either Palin, Perry, or Cain in the past... and all three of those are now supporting ... GINGRICH.

That should tell them all they need to know. STOP listening to the media, STOP listening to Romney’s lying ads, throw that those lying BS mailers from Romney in the trash and LISTEN to those you formally supported! Then get down there and vote for NEWT!

GO NEWT!

[Kenny]

But quit calling for Santorum to get out. If Newt can’t win it on his own strength, then he can’t beat Obama anyway. And Santorum has other priorities right now. We all need to pray for his daughter

Absolutely! And there are some real game changers in the wind tonight, Cain endorsement, Giuliani against Romney, Sarah saying she thought Newt could beat Obama. Lots going on.

Then there's the New Dixie Strategies Poll that has Gingrich Up By .38%

(Jan 23-25) 2,567 likely voters.

[bksanders]

Rick picks up two out of three swayed by the winds of the GOP-E attack dogs.
They simply wont turn to the Mittiot in numbers.
Santorum needs to do the right thing. Sorry to hear about his daughter.

[bksanders]

"Romney’s lead is a mile wide and paper thin.

I like that. A lot!

I expect anybody with clout and moxie to pony up by Monday.
Too much at stake here. Though it is not the end game, it's big.
I wonder which way the wind bloweth that paper…

[byteback]

Rick will make a great VP! He’s been around the track and won’t be a deer in the headlights that the media will easily overwhelm.

[entropy12]

None of them are real fiscal conservatives. I do not expect national debt to be reduced by any of them. Only the rate of growth may improve over president Zero. Even president Reagan’s spending tripled in 8 years. Newt’s claim of having balanced budgets for 4 years is a lie since he includes funds raided from social security account into general budget. And Paul is unelectable and weird on foreign policy & drugs. Basically we are screwed. Just a matter of degree.

[larryleo]

It’s pretty simple. If conservatives want a conservative to be President, they need to make up their mind. Newt and Rick are hurting each other. Based on national polls, Rick needs to step aside. He’s waiting for Newt to implode, but that’s not going to happen. Newt has come back twice and he has the financial backing to go the distance if he needs to. Conservatives who support Rick, must do the strategic thing and move over to Newt. It looks a conservative coalition is starting to form. In 2008, it was Romney and Huckabee cancelling each other out to open it up for the Moderate McCain by default. McCain was weak in the debates because a moderate cannot make the strong enough arguments. Newt will make the strong conservative arguments. We not only need to defeat Obama, but change the countries mindset so that we never make the mistake again of electing another Obama.

[paudio]

LOL. SOPO: Sacred Order of the Perpetually Offended.... I like that! We see many of them here, in FR, as well as in many groups that are based on some ethnic or religious identity...

[greeneyes]

[Newt’s claim of having balanced budgets for 4 years is a lie since he includes funds raided from social security account into general budget.]

Not exactly. I remember quite well those years. There was a budget surplus. The amount of the surplus IIRC was just a little more than the social security excess. Hence the budget was “balanced”.

Clinton campaigned on the best way to spend the surplus, and after the about the first week, no one even acknowledged that the surplus was a lie.

During that time the excess of social security coming in over the amount sent out was invested in special issue Treasuries. Once the Treasuries were purchased this excess raised the amount of the national debt.

So the more money there was coming in for social security, the more the national debt went up. Also during that time, every time there was some money available to apply to the debt, the Democrats in congress would have all sorts of suggestions about expenditures.

Greenspan kept telling them the money needed to be applied to pay down the debt.

[entropy12]

I do not remember the exact details, so you may be right. However I will research national debt at beginning of Reagan’s 1st term and at end of his 2nd term. My guess is national debt went up significantly. Same thing during Clinton’s 8 years. Of course Zero is breaking all records on national debt explosion.

[greeneyes]

Yeh, the thing is the national debt has been going up since the 50’s. But you have to keep in mind that not all of that was due to spending.

For example, the excess social security funds received are not spent, but invested. Once invested that is reflected as part of the national debt, because the government owes it to participants at a future date. I think I read somewhere that 60% of the national debt is actually owed to Americans.

Government accounting is very confusing, and I only know a little of it. I have actually been thinking of taking a course, just so I could double check stuff a little better myself, since we have a news media that can't be counted on.

At any rate the national debt is different from the budget, and just because the debt goes up doesn't necessarily mean the budget wasn't balanced. During the Clinton/Newt years the situation was better, cause I looked some of that stuff up about 6 months ago. Just can't remember all of it now.

[entropy12]

Here is the yearly history of National Debt:

09/30/2010-— 13,561,623,030,891.79 Obama
09/30/2009-— 11,909,829,003,511.75— /
09/30/2008-— 10,024,724,896,912.49-—\
09/30/2007-— 9,007,653,372,262.48-——\
09/30/2006-— 8,506,973,899,215.23———\
09/30/2005-— 7,932,709,661,723.50 GW Bush
09/30/2004-— 7,379,052,696,330.32———/
09/30/2003-— 6,783,231,062,743.62-——/
09/30/2002-— 6,228,235,965,597.16——/
09/30/2001-— 5,807,463,412,200.06-—/
09/30/2000-— 5,674,178,209,886.86—/
09/30/1999-— 5,656,270,901,615.43-—\
09/30/1998-— 5,526,193,008,897.62——\
09/30/1997-— 5,413,146,011,397.34-——\
09/30/1996-— 5,224,810,939,135.73 BJ Clinton
09/29/1995-— 4,973,982,900,709.39-——/
09/30/1994-— 4,692,749,910,013.32——/
09/30/1993-— 4,411,488,883,139.38-—/
09/30/1992-— 4,064,620,655,521.66—/
09/30/1991-— 3,665,303,351,697.03-—\
09/28/1990-— 3,233,313,451,777.25——\
09/29/1989-— 2,857,430,960,187.32-——\
09/30/1988-— 2,602,337,712,041.16———\
09/30/1987-— 2,350,276,890,953.00-———\
09/30/1986-— 2,125,302,616,658.42 Bush41 &
09/30/1985-— 1,823,103,000,000.00 Reagan
09/30/1984-— 1,572,266,000,000.00———/
09/30/1983-— 1,377,210,000,000.00-——/
09/30/1982-— 1,142,034,000,000.00——/
09/30/1981-— 997,855,000,000.00——/
09/30/1980-— 907,701,000,000.00-—/

There is not a single year when debt did not go up.
In other words there were no balanced budgets ever
during this period.

[entropy12]

I don’t think any of the surplus social security funds are invested. They have been spent, every dime of them. The social security account has IOU’s from the US Treasury in the form of Treasury bonds. Those surplus funds can not be cashed in from outside banks or other sovereign countries because that is not where they are invested. They have been spent all in the general budget.

[Yaelle]

Gd bless Rick Santorum, a good man and a strong conservative! He doesn’t need to get behind someone else this early. He’s a strong contender with far less negatives. And he did the right thing, going to be with his precious baby girl in the hospital. His love of his family is palpable and even if he’s not your favorite, you have to give him credit for being the kind of good man he is.

Donated more tonight in honor of his baby Bella, may his coffers and her health soar to strength.

[greeneyes]

You have to know how much excess Social Security was in that debt and subtract it out. During that period, even if you had a balanced budget, and stuck to it, the debt would still go up due to excess Social Security payments.

Plus you would have to check that budget against actual expenditures to see if there was any spending of more than was budgeted.

Budget, spending, and debt are 3 different things.

[greeneyes]

[I don’t think any of the surplus social security funds are invested. They have been spent, every dime of them. The social security account has IOU’s from the US Treasury in the form of Treasury bonds. Those surplus funds can not be cashed in from outside banks or other sovereign countries because that is not where they are invested. They have been spent all in the general budget.]

By law the excess funds have to be used to purchase special issue treasuries which are not negotiable. They are not part of the general fund. They can only be redeemed to use for Social Security payments. When cashed they lower the national debt.

This is held as part of intergovernmental debt. Meanwhile Congress has been busy spending money and the Treasury has been busy printing money and borrowing money from other countries to pay for the spending.

It's kinda like saving $6000 a year in a savings account, but charging 60,000 on a bunch of credit cards for years and years. The money is still there in the account, but your net worth will eventually be negative, your ability to pay the bills will run out, and a bankruptcy court will take your savings to help pay your debt.

[greeneyes]

There are 2 figures which make up the national debt. One is public debt that is owed to people or countries who have purchased our Treasuries.

The other is intergovernmental debt. Things like Social Security excess are an example of this.

Public Debt + Intergovernmental Debt = National Debt.

If you will look at the Public Debt during the Clinton years,IIRC you will see that the Public debt did go down during that period.

[nwrep]

I am seeing the same denial on FR that we saw in the last days of Election 2008, people ignoring the obvious polling data, which is usually very accurate close to the end.

I say Romney by 4-6 points, big win unfortunately for him, but Gingrich will live to fight another day. He will stage a come back after this disappointment.