traditional > traditionally
They were within 5% in 2000 and 2004.
Will RAS release this tracking poll Monday and Tuesday?
I do agree when you look at the internals, that the Hurricane did have some impact last week. Whether it was a shift/bounce, hard to tell. But just the fact the election was off the front page for 5 days, impacts polling perceptions.
In the end, I cannot see Obama getting a lasting impact from the hurricane. This has always been an election about the economy and the role of government. That did not change last week.
Romney trending back up with independents is very good to see. He definitely has the enthusiasm gap. Both based on polling and anecdotal evidence like crowd sizes and campaign messages. The fact that Romney is even close in PA, MN, MI, & WI tells me this race has to be trending his way. And that the top line polls are not picking it up.
Also, Romney has closed or taken the lead in early voting in several swing states compared to 2008. In OH alone, there is a flip of 263k early votes from 2008 to 2012. Obama won OH by 262k. And McCain actually won election day in OH by 60k votes. Even Axelrod this morning didn’t try and dispute the numbers of Fox News Sunday.
In the end, Romney will win Independents. Obama won them by 8 in 2008. So if Romney even wins them by 8 (which is on the low side based on all the polling), they I can’t see him losing the election. Gallup/Pew/RAS have all released Party ID polls in the last week, showing anywhere from a 12-15 point Party ID shift from D to R since 2008. And these are large sample polls with a MOE of 1% (Gallup was over 9,000 respondents).
And finally, Romney will win because he has the enthusiasm gap. Obama had it in 2008, but Romney is drawing crowds 10x Obama in the same states this time. We saw what happened in 2010, and nothing has changed that anger and frustration the last 2 years. In fact, a vast part of the country is even more frustrated than in 2010. The economy is actually going in reverse the last 18 months. And the USSC upheld Obamacare.
Romney is a businessman and has run a well organized and strategic campaign. I am confident his GOTV efforts will carry the day on Tuesday. (we have already seen it in the early voting).
Yes, RR is either tied or ahead here which does not square. Ras is playing the horse race all the way.
Barone said that every pollster that he knows is scared to death that America cannot be polled correctly today. Some fear for their future. Americans are not bound to land lines and so they poll cell phones also but then some of that data is not available. Out of all of the clls that pollsters make... only 9% of the calls that they make are even answered. Of those that do answer, less than seven percent will take the time to answer any polling questions.
He said the polling is missing something that is going on in every place he looks. He said he must rely on all that he has learned over the years and what he knows to be true. He then said he has been in most precincts and counties in the US that set trends and he has met and talked with the people at the local levels in both parties. He has studied their ground games and watched both operations. He extrapolates that up through county and then State and national. He looks at the momentum... where the candidates are campaigning and to who they are campaigning and what they are saying. He says when he does that he comes to a confident conclusion of at least 52-47 300+ EV for Romney.
When pressed for an example of trends not being caught, he pointed to Eastern Ohio and the huge increase in Evangelical and Catholic voters moving firmly to Romney. “They are not looking at them anywhere... they are not polling for them and they are not catching them”.
LLS
“Yet Nationally it’s tied at 49%, how does that happen?” - high pop states like NY and Cali go for the Obamunist in large numbers, skewing his national numbers up. Still, the internals look good for Romney and the later days, in this poll, are better than the earlier days. Smallish trend, but good news. I think people are aware the Sandy is a FAIL for the TOTUS, which will overwhelm any small bump he had.