Free Republic

Despite President Barack Obama turning the tide with a five-point swing among Independents with his response to Hurricane Sandy, the race is still too close to call, pollster John Zogby tells Newsmax TV. The latest NewsmaxZogby polling numbers show Obama, who was down three points just a few days ago, has pulled ahead by a couple of points. Zogby said the president is “turning the tide with Independents.” “He was down by as many as nine and 10 points nationally among independents and now what we see is that that’s a razor thin,” he said. “The governor leads by only...

...There are few things certain in life, but you can count on Democrats not repeating the massive turnout they enjoyed in 2008. That year, Democrats had an 8 point advantage in OH. They had a 6 point advantage in VA and a 3 point advantage in FL. It was their biggest turnout advantage in at least three decades. Quinnipiac, almost fraudulently, assumes Democrats will have the same advantage in OH next week, but will enlarge their advantage in the other two states. VA, according to Quinnipiac will go from D+6 to D+8. Florida, amazingly, will go from D+3 to D+7,...

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent. The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent. While Obama can close the gap with a strong voter turnout effort, “reports from the field would indicate that not to be the case, and Mitt Romney may well be heading to a decisive victory,” says pollster Ed Goeas. Should Romney win by 5 percentage points, it would increase Republican chances of gaining control of the Senate....

October 22, 2012 Romney Crushing Obama with Independents in New Monmouth Poll (Update: Romney Lead Holds in Gallup) Bryan Preston A new Monmouth University poll carries more bad news for the Obama campaignadministration (that’s not a typo). Nationally, Mitt Romney now leads 48-45. That’s a flip from mid-September, when Obama led by the same margin. Five percent remain undecided.The poll finds that about 12% of likely voters in the sample have already voted nationally, and Romney leads among them 44-41. The gender gap has also closed dramatically after the first debate, with Obama leading by just four points among women...

Roughly 5 percent of respondents in Reuters/Ipsos polls said they chose the Republican contender in 2008 and will switch to Obama in 2012. Who are these defectors? The McCain-to-Obama switchers are 55 percent male, and 34 percent of them are 55 or older. (Overall, Obama trails Romney 34 percent to 52 percent among white men over 50.) About 72 percent of them are white. They are largely from the East Coast; nearly 4 in 10 live in the mid- or South Atlantic. Nearly 3 in 10 finished their education after high school, and nearly 2 in 10 have a bachelor's...

Some polls are showing Romney with a strong surge and within striking distance of winning Minnesota and some pundits are saying that will happen. There is clear evidence of strong support and this big sign in a front yard in Stillwater, Minnesota shows that.

President Obama has Eva Longoria pitching his candidacy to fellow Latinos. Now, Mitt Romney has comedian Paul Rodriguez, an erstwhile Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008.

Barack Obama may have come out swinging hard, but the second presidential debate of 2012 was no game-changer. That was the opinion of three seasoned professors and pollsters who talked to Human Events moments after the close of the stormy encounter between Obama and Mitt Romney Tuesday at Hofstra University in New York Tuesday evening. If there were any inroads made Tuesday among the voters who are still “undecided” at this point, the three political authorities agreed, they were made by Romney with his strong underscoring of a new policy on the economy. “I didn’t see the debate tonight as...

Catholic voters target of aggressive push By: Ginger Gibson October 15, 2012 12:19 PM EDT A group of conservative Catholics led by a former George W. Bush campaign staffer is engaging in a highly-targeted effort to turn out regular Mass attendees in swing states on Election Day.The most aggressive efforts are being waged in Ohio, where organizer Leonard Leo — the former Catholic outreach director for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign — and a group called The Catholic Association is trying to move the needle toward Mitt Romney.Catholics as a voting demographic tend to be a bellwether group...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Dexter Hady, a black landscaper here, is exactly the kind of Obama supporter who could have slipped through the cracks this year. He recently moved and, not being as excited about the coming election as he was about the 2008 campaign, neglected to update his voter registration. By chance, a volunteer for the Obama campaign stopped Mr. Hady outside of the Wake County Courthouse here recently and asked him if he was prepared to vote. Mr. Hady said no, and went on to explain: “I can say I was definitely more excited to vote for Obama last...

Mitt Romney's post-debate surge appears to have all but wiped out President Obama's once double-digit lead among women voters. A new Pew Research Center survey depicted a remarkable swing in the numbers, with Romney pulling even among women in polling late last week. In September, the same polling outfit showed Obama leading by 18 points among women. Among all likely voters surveyed, Romney climbed from an 8-point deficit last month to a 4-point lead. There's little question that his debate performance has played a role. A separate Gallup survey showed registered voters deemed Romney the winner by 72-20 percent, marking...

As Mitt Romney accepts the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this week, he will try to convince voters across the nation that he has the executive experience and business savvy needed to strengthen its economy – and that he’s the best person to lead the country. Americans may be evenly divided on that question – Romney leads President Obama 47 percent to 46 percent in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll of registered voters – but Wall Street has already made its presidential preference clear. After supporting Obama in 2008, financial firms and the people who work at them have lined...

Lyn Vaccaro admits it: "I'm officially an undecided voter." That's a big confession for the 50-year-old single mom in Milwaukee, who says she has spent "a significant amount of time as a well-known conservative." But Vaccaro, who works at a natural foods store, says she now feels that she can't put her support behind either candidate. … "I'm dreading November," Columbus, Ohio, public school teacher S. Alexander Cooke writes. "Why? Come Election Day, I'll cast my vote either to re-elect President Obama or to replace him with Mitt Romney. Either way I'll end up feeling like I'm the only one...

A just released Gallup poll survey of voters who voted in 2008 presidential election and indicate they will vote again in November holds some bad news for Barack Obama. Among the questions asked of its respondents Gallup asked if the person being surveyed was planning to switch his/her Party vote to now support either Republican Mitt Romney or Democrat Barack Obama. Of those who had voted for John McCain in 2008 5% now supported Barack Obama. Of those original Obama supporters 9% reported their intention to vote for Republican Romney. When this 9% switch is applied to Obama’s raw popular...

Yes, it's buyer's remorse and it will probably be one of the deciding factors in the race this year. Gallup: Eighty-six percent of voters who say they voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are backing Obama again this year, a smaller proportion than 92% of 2008 John McCain voters who are supporting 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Nine percent of 2008 Obama voters have switched to supporting Romney this year, while 5% of McCain voters have switched to Obama. The results are based on July 23-29 Gallup Daily tracking with more than 2,000 registered voters who reported voting in the...

Favor is fickle, and hope and change was easier to promise than deliver on. A new Gallup poll shows that nearly 10 percent of voters who supported Barack Obama during his 2008 run have decamped and will be supporting Republican challenger Mitt Romney in this next election. At nine percent, the rate of Obama ’08 defectors is nearly double the five percent of former McCain ’08 supporters who now say they’ll cast a vote for Obama. Partly loyalty is higher in the Republican camp too, with 92 percent of former McCain supporters saying they’re sticking with the red ticket, while...

A new poll from Gallup looks at how many 2008 voters say they will switch parties in the presidential race. According to the poll, more Americans who voted for Barack Obama will be voting for Mitt Romney than John McCain voters will switch to vote for Obama. Here are Gallup's results: But as Gallup notes in its analysis of the poll, even though Obama looks likely to win fewer votes than he did in 2008, his margin of victory was large enough that the race between the president and Romney remains close.

Could it be true? Is all of this endless campaigning, a billion dollars in advertising and 24/7 blanket coverage of every word, gesture and sneeze by the candidates all a gigantic waste of time in an election which has essentially already been decided? That’s one possibility suggested by Dave Helling of McClatchy Newspapers who suggests that, "People's minds are made up, unlikely to change." [A] growing number of political scientists and campaign consultants --- backed by the latest polling data --- think the daily campaign back-and-forth is having no significant effect on voters.Most Americans have locked in their presidential decisions,...

Welcome to the molten core of the political universe, the hottest battleground in the biggest battleground state. Since 1960, Hillsborough County has called every single presidential election except for one—and there’s no reason to think that voters here won’t do it again. Look around this county of 1.2 million and you’ll find a mash-up of past and future: a solidly Democratic city bracketed by Republican-leaning suburbs; strawberry fields, ranch-style homes, and gentrified urban neighborhoods; Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, African-Americans, Midwestern retirees, college kids, active military, and young families; the brick and wrought iron of historic Ybor City, and the stucco and...

The Obama campaign wants to make the 2012 contest a “choice” between its candidate and the Republican party; the Romney campaign wants to make the vote a referendum on Barack Obama. Mitt Romney is laying low, letting the election revolve around Obama--and winning. While his campaign pushes back against Obama and the mainstream media, Romney is shaking hands on the trail--and winning support in key swing states. At the outset, Romney’s path to victory seemed a narrow one. It was universally agreed that the 2012 contest would be fought in roughly ten swing states. But Obama’s weak economic performance, and...