Posted on 09/11/2012 7:35:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Maybe this will stop the silly post-convention panic among Republicans. When the Washington Post/ABC poll tells you there's been no convention bump for Barack Obama, you can pretty much take that to the bank. Their latest survey shows the likely-voter split in the presidential race right where we found it a fortnight ago, with Obama up one single point over Mitt Romney --- in a sample that favors the Democrats:
Last week’s Democratic National Convention helped President Obama improve his standing against Republican Mitt Romney, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but did little to reduce voter concern about his handling of the economy.
The survey shows that the race remains close among likely voters, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent, virtually unchanged from a poll taken just before the conventions.
So, the second paragraph actually disproves the first. But the Post tries hard to pretend that no movement among likely voters means improvement for Obama:
But among a wider sample of all registered voters, Obama holds an apparent edge, topping Romney at 50 percent to 44 percent, and has clear advantages on important issues in the campaign when compared with his rival.
We're less than 60 days out. Registered-voter samples don't mean much at this stage of the election; it’s likely voters that provide predictive data from surveys. They mean even less when only 26% in the sample are Republicans. The likely voter sample improves that by a point to 27%, but still has a D+6 D/R/I at 33/27/36. The 2010 midterms had a national turnout D/R/I of 35/35/30; the 2008 election was D+7 at 39/32/29. A GOP turnout of 27% would be among the worst ever in a presidential race, if not a record. Since enthusiasm measures in other surveys, notably Gallup’s, show an enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans, I’m not inclined to buy this poll’s likely-voter split as a model for this election.
Also, the internals for Obama even among RVs are hardly cheery. His job approval hasn’t budged since before the conventions. Three weeks ago, it was 47/50, and now it’s 48/50. On the economy, he went from 43/56 to 45/53. Among independents, Obama’s job approval is 45/50 with 37% strongly disapproving. That’s probably why Romney’s beating Obama among likely independent voters by eleven points, 54/43. Obama won independents by eight in 2008 on his way to a seven point victory overall. That’s a 19-point swing among independents.
In other words, the convention had no real impact at all on the race. That’s why I say “I told you so” in my column for The Week:
Gallup conducted a survey of more than 1,000 adults over the two days following the end of the Democratic National Convention to determine which convention had the most impact. In practically every measure, the conventions produced no net change in anticipated voter behavior. After the Republican convention, 40 percent said they’d be more likely to vote for Mitt Romney, while 38 percent said less likely, with 21 percent saying the convention had no real impact at all. For Democrats, the numbers are 43/38/20, respectively. Both sets of numbers are within the 4 percent margin of error, producing a complete wash.
Conventions used to serve the purpose of cutting through the media filters so that undecided voters could see candidates for themselves and decide on their vote. But Gallup’s data on independents shows that such voters were largely unswayed by the conventions. The Democratic convention produced a 39/39 split among unaffiliated voters (half said they were more likely to vote for Obama, and half said less), while the GOP convention had a three-point positive edge, 36/33 — still well within the margin of error. Furthermore, fewer people watched the conventions at length this year, with only 55 percent of Gallup’s respondents saying they’d watched “a great deal” or “some” of the Democratic convention, and 51 percent for the GOP convention. Those are the lowest ratings from Gallup for nominating conventions in 12 years.
The speeches didn’t exactly move the needle, either — at least not those by the nominees. Only 43 percent rated Barack Obama’s speech “excellent” or “good,” just 5 points higher than Mitt Romney’s 38 percent. Both candidates scored a 16 percent combined “poor” or “terrible” rating, while roughly a quarter of respondents didn’t see either speech.
So why bother spending tens of millions of dollars — including taxpayer money — to stage them?
Update: The poll also asks the “better off” question, among RVs only, and only 20% think they’re better off from 4 years ago, while 32% believe they’re worse off, and 47% say no change. Among independents, that’s 19/38/43, perhaps one reason why Romney’s up eleven among independents.
If Romney keeps that 10%+ advantage over Indies, we win. Our side is hyper motivated. The middle is on our side. That formula wins every time.
All the polls are showing Romney up more than 10 pts among independents. Obama is still LOSING.
This REALLY means that Romney is now way ahead since that D/R/I ratio is way too skewed towards democrats.
I don’t put much stock in ANY polls at this point being just a few days removed from the convention, but for those who live and die by the daily polls, I hope this finally puts them at ease a bit.
The way I see it, Obama got a small bounce out of the convention, which should have been expected since the Dems got to have their convention last. This is why the party in power always chooses to hold theirs last. But the convention did nothing to change the fundamentals of this race.
I’m not completely 100% sure of a Romney victory, mainly because I still worry about him being aggressive enough and about making enough Americans aware of the fact that Obama’s far more than just a nice guy in over his head (the 3rd party Super-Pacs will likely need to be the ones to make that case).
AND, with the wizards of smart on our side shoving Romney down our throats, we gave away one of our most potent issues-Obamacare and the larger issue of government takeover of as much of our lives as they can get away with.
That really only leaves us with the economy, and puts us in the position of almost hoping that the economic news isn’t TOO good that it might help Obama. Plus, I guess with Ryan on the ticket, we are also debating entitlement reform, although I haven’t seen that play out too much so far.
Overall, it’s kind of like running this race with one hand tied behind our backs. We should be smoking this guy, but we’re not because we’ve made the campaign almost solely about the economy and the “are you better off” question. Because of the dismal state of our economy, this alone may well be more than enough to win, but to me it feels way too close for comfort to be running such a close race when we could easily be winning this thing going away.
An analyst on Fox was saying yesterday that these polls are also oversampling Black voters, they are using the 2008 turnout models that had blacks voting at a historic high of 15% of the electorate. In 2010 the black turnout was only 10% of the electorate (33% lower than 2008). Virtually no political analyst believes we will see a repeat of the record black turnout from 2008, it will probably be slightly higher than 2010 because Obama is on the ballot but still only in the 11% or 12%. The result of this according to the analyst was that pollsters are overestimating Obama’s total by 3% to 4%.
33/27/36
Baby’s got back.
POLL: RACE TIGHT AS OBAMA EDGE NARROWS TO 2 PTS... SWING STATE DAILY TRACKING: O 46%, R 45%...
CNN: OBAMA +6...
POLLED MORE DEMS?
ABCNEWSWASHPOST LIKELY VOTERS: O 49% R 48%...
... SURVEYED 33% DEMOCRAT, 23% REPUBLICAN
GALLUP FLASHBACK: MONDALE TOPS REAGAN...
WHICH POLLS WERE MOST ACCURATE IN '08?
Please folks DON'T you see the pattern here how the liberal buttkissing black turd pollsters are trying to shape the electoral for their messiah and going all out to demoralize our side? Don't spend too much time concentrating on polls, GO out and work for the R&R team! I betcha the ObombO team are also shaking in their boots much more so because they know it's going to be TEA TIME come Nov! I'm telling you there is a MO out there not so much for Romney, but for the love of country...SO STAY THE COURSE and FIGHT!!
I wouldn't take anything from the MSM to the bank, I would be arrested for counterfeiting.
NONE of this takes into account the simple truth that there are many Dems who voted for Obama last time who will not vote for him this time (some will vote R), while there is likely not a single McCain voter who will vote FOR Obama this time. That's going to prove to be one of the most significant undercounted aspects of this race. It will stun the pundits just as we were stunned on election night in 08 when we surveyed a deep red suburb of Dayton and found that a full 25% had voted for Obama.
The theory:
Pollsters initially agreed to go along with “Operation Dispirit the Opposition”.
They were quickly called on it and exposed.
Knowing what the real internals are, they are thus opting to
save their credibility.
27% Republican sampling when, in most self-identifying polls Conservatives self-identify at twice the rate as Liberals?
yeah.. sure.
Remember the Alamo?
REMEMBER CHIK-FIL-A!
No worries, the silent Americans will vote in force - landslide forthcoming.
Remember the Alamo?
REMEMBER CHIK-FIL-A!
No worries, the silent Americans will vote in force - landslide forthcoming.
yeah... I agree.. the chick fil a phenom and the 2016 movie, add in the HUGE pubbie turnout in the 2010 elections.. seems to be we win...
‘You Didn’t Build That” sealed the deal.
If Romney was concerned, he’d go negative, but he isn’t, because he doesn’t have to.
O’Bummer dug his own political grave, so all RR has to do is not mess up.
The black business community has been gradually drifting away from the support of Barack Obama. Harry C. Alford, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents nearly two million black businessmen in the United States, said the following:
"When Obama became president we were all happy about the symbolism - America's first black president. We really didn't care about his position and views on anything. We just wanted a black president no matter what. We should have been more careful, as his views on small business, especially black business, are counter to ours. His view of business is that it should be a few major corporations which are totally unionized and working with the government, which should also be massive and reaching every level of American society. Thus his first Executive Order was the reinstatement of Project Labor Agreements in government contracting. PLAs give labor unions an exclusive option in construction jobs - all participating firms must use union labor or, at least, pay union wages and abide by union rules. This activity, in effect, discriminates against blacks, Hispanics, and women per se, as trade unions deliberately under employ them. President George W. Bush eliminated PLAs from federal contracting and his main reason was 'unions discriminate against small business, women and minorities.' So here we were with the first black president who deliberately discriminates against small business, women and minorities. How ironic!"
A double-digit lead among independents is impressive. This article is encouraging, and I want to believe it, but I won’t rest easy until Romney is leading in polls across the board.
We're seeing this kind of result among independents in poll after poll. No democrat or Republican can win if the independents are against you 54/43! Period! My guess is that 54/43 will be pretty close to the final result among all voters in November.
Keep in mind we are also in the midst of the 4-5 point “Rally to the Flag” bump the President always gets during the week of 09-11.
Like it or not 0bama was President when the Seals got Bin Laden, that is going to help in the polls this week.
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