Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight-- Aug. 9: National Polls Shouldn't Panic Romney

One problem is that the trend toward Mr. Obama in national polls has hardly been uniform. The Gallup national tracking poll has shown a very flat race. And Rasmussen Reports had a swing toward Mr. Romney in its release on Thursday, with his pulling ahead by four points in its survey. Weekly tracking polls from Public Policy Polling and YouGov have also not shown especially good numbers for Mr. Obama lately. If there had really been a shift in the race of the magnitude that the Real Clear Politics average implies — it has Mr. Obama gaining three points on Mr. Romney over roughly the past 10 days — we probably wouldn’t be seeing these contradictory data points.

“The fox poll, which was a RV poll and had +9 Dem model, had some very bad news for 0bama. Even with stacking the deck, Romeny had a +3 lead when it came to the economy.”

I don’t understand why polls would do this. This isn’t 2008! There simply aren’t 9% more Democrats than Republicans right now. That’s a ridiculously unrealistic population to be using.

Just by common sense, if Obama’s Job Approval is around 47%, he cannot possibly be up by 9 points. GWB’s number was 49.5, which translated to a lead of 3.5 nationally. So Obama might be ahead by 1 point, assuming a similar population to what we had in 2004.

However, I think in reality, there is more GOP enthusiasm vs. Dem. enthusiasm now than in 2004, not because Romney is any more liked than Kerry, but the GOP dissatisfaction with Obama is stronger than the Dem dissatisfaction against Bush was, at that time. (The dissatisfaction with Bush later became much stronger, but in 2004 was not so strong, except for the really firm Dems, who, of course, never liked him).

Plus I think Bush’s support among his base was stronger than Obama’s, because it was a broader base. In the Midwest, there was a ton of voters that voted for Bush because they were anti gay marriage and pro-life, for example. I don’t think there is a similar level of support for Obama across his base. They seem less engaged.

So a key ingredient to guessing what will happen in November is getting the population right as to who actually votes. It surely will not consist of 9% more Democrats than Republicans.

The national polling isn’t as critical as the battleground state polling. Romney needs to win say Ohio and Florida or else he’ll lose in the EC.

That is true but, unless the election if very close, I think both national and state polling results will predict the same winner. I fully expect to wake up on November 6th, read the last Rasmussen national poll and know the outcome of the 2012 election in advance of the actual vote counting.

You’d rather have a Muslim-hiding-in-plain sight than a patriotic American who happens to be a mormon.

how very Christian of you.

Go Vote for BO then.

God Save America from 4 more years of BO

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