Posted on 05/16/2012 5:43:50 AM PDT by icwhatudo
Mitt Romney has moved out to an eight-point lead over President Obama in North Carolina after the two men were virtually tied a month ago.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Tar Heel State shows the putative Republican nominee earning 51% of the vote to Obamas 43%. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.
Thats a big change from last month when Romney posted a narrow 46% to 44% lead over the president in Rasmussen Reports first survey of the race in North Carolina. Democrats have signaled North Carolinas importance as a key swing state by deciding to hold their national convention in Charlotte this summer.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.com ...
Show some compassion ! Offer to buy him a one-way bus ticket... to Massachusetts.
A truly amazing poll and it will take more to see if it holds.
We have to keep in mind that the Obama dogs have not been unleashed on Romney full force yet. You can be sure they will be. The money is there to hit Romney hard. What will be telling is where Obama is spending his money. Rush mentioned today that the Bain ad is not being run in MO. I think Obama will make his stand in OH, FL, and VA. I think he’s already lost some states he took last time, like IN and NC.
>> the Obama dogs have not been unleashed on Romney full force <<
Yeah, for sure. But the process also can work the other way around. Romney has a chief strategist/ad guru named Stuart Stevens, who can be as crafty and mean as they come. Like another Lee Atwater. Knows every dirty trick in the business. Remember how Romney’s air war destroyed Gingrich in FL? I’m thinking that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Uh... the word is squirrel.
Don't think I can agree with you there. Obama (or any Democrat) is automatically going to get 40-45% of the vote no matter who the GOP puts up. There was only one time in modern history a Democrat got less than 40%. You have to go back to the 1972 Nixon landslide to the last time the Dems has less than 40% of the popular vote (37.52% for McGovern).
Here is the Democratic popular vote since:
1976 - 48.02% (Carter)
1980 - 41.01% (Carter)
1984 - 40.56% (Mondale)
1988 - 45.65% (Dukakis)
1992 - 43.01% (Clinton)
1996 - 49.23% (Clinton)
2000 - 48.38% (Gore)
2004 - 48.27% (Kerry)
2008 - 52.87% (Obama)
So visions of a 65-35 GOP cakewalk is probably a pipe dream - Even Reagan couldn't do that against Carter or Mondale.
The best hope Obama has right now is to have an opponent that is polarizing. The only way Obama can hope to win is that if enough independents think the other guy is even worse. Well that will not be the case with Romney. I realize that many conservatives loathe Romney - and for good reason. But in the end, no matter how much they say otherwise on internet forums, they are going to pull the lever for him because no way will they be voting for Obama.
So it's not disgruntled conservatives but the independents that will be deciding this election.
I later agreed it was too exhuberent on my part to say 65%...perhaps in the high 50’s.
Obama can spend until he turns mauve; he's done. One and done.
I'll paraphrase what another FReeper posted in another thread: Obama’s gay “courage” came about because he's been bought off and is going scorched Earth from here on out through January 20, 2013.
Obama is twice-burnt toast - bank on it!!!
Absolutely correct. Along with ruling the Bible as hate literature for the backwards.
That’s slightly inaccurate. Carter hit 50% of the vote in ‘76. I know it’s nitpicking.
Romney won’t sit and take it like Bush and McCain did. Romney will get down and dirty if that’s what it takes. I’ve always contended that. Someone doesn’t run for president for the amount of time he has without fighting to the death with any and all weapons needed to win it.
As long as Romney is sitting pretty in the key states, he has the luxury of staying above the fray with a positive message, but if it gets close, he won’t leave any stone unturned. I’m sure of that. He’ll be a Papa Grizzly.
My bad, it was Ford/Dole that got the 48.02% in 1976. Jimmy Carter came in at 50.08% that year. He dropped to 41.01% just four years later.
After a very discouraging fall and winter with respect to the early GOP debates and primaries, I am finally starting to warm to the coming campaign and I'm starting to smell a GOP landslide.
When Sarah Palin announced she wasn't running in early October, I was so upset I couldn't even talk about it for weeks. Then when Herman Cain self-destructed and Michelle Bachmann failed to ignite, I started feeling rather hopeless about our prospects. I was never a Newt Gingrich fan and while I had no particular issue with Rick Santorum, he just never came across to me as a serious player. I realized that when he went home one weekend to "work on his tax returns." Now maybe I'm being unreasonable but that sealed the deal for me that Santorum was just not ready for prime time. I mean, if you can't even hire somebody to do your taxes for you, how are you going to run a country?
So that leaves Mitt Romney as the only man standing in the GOP race. A year ago, this would have been a nightmare scenario. Many of us here at Free Republic are still in denial but the fact is, Romney is now the only man standing between us and a disastrous Obama second term - which may well be the end of our country as we know it.
I know it's still early and I know that Obama's campaign will apparently have a billion dollars to throw around. But I don't think it will be enough. The American people might have been suckered into the "hope and change" meme of 2008 but they know better now. Hell, I think George W. Bush will beat Obama this November if he was eligible to run.
Say what you want about Romney but he's a careful man, not prone to big mistakes and gaffes. He's assembling a professional staff of people who know what they are doing and the campaign you will see this fall will bear no resemblance at all to the crappy, disjointed campaign you saw four years ago with John McCain. If Obama decides to go negative on Romney with the class warfare anti-Bain Capital stuff, the Romney campaign will not be afraid to go nuclear on Obama in return. And over the past four years, Obama has given the Romney campaign way more ammunition than they will ever dig up on Romney - even if they go back to when Romney was in fourth grade. Think Dukakis in a tank, only 10 times worse.
No, Romney won't fire up the conservative base like Reagan was able to do in 1980. But conservatives are going to flock to the polls this November, if anything, to vote in the down ticket races that will feature Tea-Party conservatives. And while they are in that booth, regardless of whether they admit it or not, they are going to pull Romney's lever at the top, even if they wince while doing it. Because they will know that by doing so, they will at least be canceling out a vote for Obama.
As for independents, they are going to vote for Romney in droves. Watch and see. Even a lot of white, male Democrats are going to go for Romney this time. I just ran the electoral calculator for the states I think are very winnable this November and came up with a 342-196 GOP landslide.
Watch the Wisconsin recall election on June 5. If Walker wins that one, you can put WI into the red for November as well.
I not going to get overconfident but I'm starting to feel good about our chances. What I'm really looking forward to is not necessarily a Romney presidency but the prospects of a filibuster proof majority in the House and control of the Senate.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html
Looked at your link for real clear politics. I do not understand why they are calling AZ a tossup state.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/az/arizona_romney_vs_obama-1757.html
Obama would be a fool to waste money in NC, he is NOT gonna win that state, period.
Okay, my may was way off for some reason.. not sure why I thought only 67 needed, clearly more than that. must not have had enough sleep.
If I had to venture a guess today, which states are likely to flip, in order of their likliness:
IN
NC
OH
IA
FL
VA
PA
WI
NM
NH
NV
NJ (If Christie is on ticket)
MI and MN are not likely to flip, if EITHER of these states go RED you are looking at an EC routing, because if one of these goes RED, you are going to see other places that are democratic strongholds flip too. Personally while Obama has been a failure, Romney is not likeable or savvy enough to push that advantage to flip those strongholds, so if one of these two go RED, that means you have a tidal wave going on, and any state in the North East could change.
I think FL is more likely than IA or maybe even OH but I nitpick. I think against my original instinct, after seeing new polling, that NH is unlikely to flip. I fear it has finally gone to the dark side after years of exodus from MA. I also fear NV has gone to the dark side too. CO is not on your list - another worrisome state (McCain was smoked there in defiance of past election results for the GOP). I think CO is at least as likely to flip as PA.
Oh screw it. I’m going to go way out on the limb and predict Romney taps Rubio for VP. But that’s not the out on the limb part.
I think Rubio materializes into the existential threat the democrats fear most. I think that with Rubio we win NM, NV, CO, and the grand prize - Kaleefornia. It’s time to face the future of the GOP, namely, there is none if we don’t start winning over hispanics/latinos. Rubio will go a long way, I think, in doing that.
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