As I’ve been writing this, the link to today’s Rasmussen poll showing Mitt Romney with a growing lead on Obama has gone dead and then come back up (possibly because it’s headlining Drudge), but here’s the relevant part of the findings from HotAir’s Ed Morrissey:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Mitt Romney earning 50% of the vote and President Obama attracting 43% support. Four percent (4%) would vote for a third party candidate, while another three percent (3%) are undecided.
This is the first time Romney has reached the 50% level of support and is his largest lead ever over the president. It comes a week after a disappointing jobs report that raised new questions about the state of the economy.
This is a daily tracking poll, and keep in mind that those tend to be more prone to static. But this is still Romney’s biggest lead on Obama yet, and it does follow a trend. Yesterday’s Rasmussen daily tracker had Romney leading Obama by 4 percent. The two days before that, Romney was up by 5 percent. He was leading by 2 percent on May 7th, one percent on May 6th, and trailed Obama by one point on May 5th. So clearly there has been consistent upward movement for Romney.
But what does it mean? It may be too early to tie it to the gay marriage debate, and the WaPo hit on Romney’s high school pranks probably hasn’t had enough time to seep into the public consciousness yet. So it’s too soon to say that attack has been a failure.
Based on Rasmussen’s report, it could be tied to economic factors. Likely voters are giving Romney much higher marks on the economy than Obama:
Thirty-seven percent (37%) give the president good or excellent marks for his handling of the economy. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he’s doing a poor job. Consumer confidence has slipped four points since last week’s government report on job creation and unemployment. The number who believe their personal finances are getting better slipped from 30% a week ago to 28% today. The number who fear their finances are getting worse increased from 43% before the jobs report to 47% today.
This fits with Gallup’s poll numbers today, which also show Romney with an edge over Obama on economic issues, despite the fact that this subject hasn’t really dominated the political news cycle later. Could it be that the Obama campaign’s attempt to divert the race from economic news to social and cultural issues is actually hurting him with voters? The Obama campaign has spent the past few weeks talking about everything from Romney’s dog to Osama bin Laden to gay marriage, while Romney has remained fairly focused on the economy. Maybe voters view distractions as a lack of seriousness on Obama’s part.
The thing to watch for here is in the next week, whether those numbers will weaken significantly for Romney as a result of the "bullying" hit piece by WaPo, which will be an indication of whether further hit pieces will have effect, as Jonathan Tobin fears, or not.
I'm of the view that the hit piece, which is a hit piece, won't depress Romney's numbers. I have to believe that those whose votes are up in the air will not be affected by, and will reject, the claim of some nexus between that 47 year old event and the man today.
I was a Dem until 2008, and I am strongly pro-gay marriage, but it hasn't effected me at all. I'm still voting for Romney, especially if he picks a women or a qualified minority to run with. I'm much more open to conservative causes and rhetoric than I once was, and the Dems games are showing me they have not changed one iota from the trickery, lying, and cheating that went down in 2008.
Are you kidding? Seriously? Something he did in HIGH SCHOOL?
New info out about the hit piece. The sisters of the "victim" say it they never knew anything like that had ever happened. The "victim" is deceased and can't set the record straight. A close friend of Romney's at the time who was quoted in the article, was misquoted and the WP had to correct its article. The correction was quietly done under the radar and no attention or announcement was made about the correction. Sounds a little fishy to me….
A 47 year old boarding school prank as the post's headliner? Yeah ; your right: the small "p" is for purposeful. I really believe that it will have no effect; nor do I believe the myriad of non- economic issues brought forth by the administration. After-all the electorate has grown used to this. I think what is happening is that same electorate growing used to the idea of a "President" Romney. Its simple really: When a losing team gets a new coach and continues to lose, then its time to fire the coach and hire another. If these poll numbers hold for any length of time or advance further in favor of Romney then the President has a real problem. It would mean that the race has become Romney's to lose. That could be good news for Obama as well however it would still be up to Romney.
i think that there are 2-3 percent of the country that are dumb enough to vote for Obama on the sole reason for Romney's pranks, but I also think there is about 50-60 percent of people that are smart enough not to fall for cheap political tricks. lets get back to the real issues. n n
I was a Dem until 2008, and I am strongly pro-gay marriage, but it hasn’t effected me at all. I’m still voting for Romney, especially if he picks a women or a qualified minority to run with. I’m much more open to conservative causes and rhetoric than I once was, and the Dems games are showing me they have not changed one iota from the trickery, lying, and cheating that went down in 2008.
I was considering voting for some Democratic women, because I am also strongly, strongly feminist and I want gender parity in government more than I want anything else politically, but if they keep this up, I won’t even vote for Dem women and I will likely cement my transition to the conservative side of the body politic.
I think that while the very young and the very poor continue to be fascinated by everything Obama says, mainstream Americans know that something isn't quite right. I've observed that almost every time some big showy media circus is created, there's something quite damaging going on in the White House. How many times is this guy going to pull the smoke and mirrors trick before some of the rubes catch on? While the Zimmerman story was compelling, I think it was an egregious attempt to consolidate white guilt and black anger and translate them into votes. Of course by sending Jackson and Sharpton to stir the pot, this backfired because they lied to the churches they visited. Now nobody knows what is real and what is fiction. This is not what a sitting president should be doing. And also during that week, Obama's main lawyer pulled a major pratfall in supporting the ACA in front of the Supreme Court. n n
I agree. It looks like the Obama team is 'jumping the shark' — a reference to the waning days of Happy Days comedy when ratings were dropping and the writers/producers were looking for ANYTHING to revive sagging ratings. It's not a good sign for Obama's level of support, when his brain trust seems to be throwing all kinds of spaghetti at the wall — to see if anything sticks. Sorry, mixed metaphors — sort of like the mixed messages from the Obama team.
Now I think that Obama's sudden "evolution" into supporting gay marriage is as opportunistic as hell. And what's more, he really can't do anything because marriage is set up by the states. So what he will do is continue to bully states like Texas and North Carolina and others in order to agitate his base out of their government induced complacency and into the voting booth. People like me-teachers, police, firefighters, sales workers and others see the liberal rich infrastructure taking more of our money and give it to people and organizations with which we do not agree. And what is more, there's no referendum and we have no say in how the money is spent.
Yes, our taxes need to go to our local governments that pay for teachers, police, firefighters. Federal government needs to ratchet down on most agendas except military, foreign policy and interstate commerce.
Every dirty political trick just goes further to convince the electorate of the truth, that Obama's team are just dirty political tricksters, and is this what we want in a president? Please keep it up so everybody but the hopelessly hard core liberals will eventually have their eyes opened.
Anyone who took this long to realize that President Obama doesn't take things seriously needs help. n nIn all seriousness, this doesn't surprise me. The President has acted pretentious and condescending, is it any surprise that drives more people to anyone but him?
Although a left wing democrat, I always thought Bush senior got a raw deal on the “vision” thing – not that he had any but that he had a steady and consistent hand on the foreign policy tiller. In a similar manner I find Obama underwhelming in the vision department but not given credit for focus, managerial acumen and respect for his adversaries. When the next crisis hits who would be most likely to call upon his predecessors for counsel? Certainly not Romney who sees consultation and deference as weakness unbecoming of a top dog.
First of all, the WaPo piece on Romney's so-called bullying incident is despicable to the nth degree. nSecondly, does O'bama (through his various hitmen) really want to start delving deep into the past of his opponent?… and Particularly about bullying when O'bama runs his administration like a gang of bullies… and this is not 50 years ago… this is pretty much any day in the past 3.5 years.
I'd STILL rather have a high school bully than the panzy we have in office now
I am more concerned by the fact that no one seems to care about it than that he did it — No, I am not saying this disqualifies Romney for the POTUS seat — but I am still disturbed by this. n nIt is the same thing as George Zimmerman, except that Zimmerman had a gun and used it.
Maybe the electorate isn't as stupid as Obama and his hit men think.
Good comments above. It seems that Obama's Distraction Operation is wearing thin and, like even the best methods of concealment, wears thinner each time it is used. n nAt this point it would might be effective for Romney to borrow a page from Reagan's campaign against Carter and adapt the old, "There you go again," response. Every time Obama comes up with some new Distraction from the economy, deficits or energy, Romney should chuckle and say to the President: You're at it again– stirring up phony issues to distract from [fill in the blank with the latest bad news]. Romney can leave it to allies and Super PAC's to issue the denials and shoot holes in the Distractions while Romney remains focused on the increasingly transparent tactic of Obama to avoid the real problems. (Not a bad attack ad against Obama: Avoiding The Real Problems). n n(And I do think Romney's response should be directed to the President so the voters make that direct connection with every Distraction to Obama, so Obama winds up owning every negative, scurrilous attack that any Leftist puts out there).
I wouldn't jumpt to conclusions as long as GOP pollster Rasmussen is the only one showing Romney up by 11% or so. Gallup Tracking, Associated Press/GfK, Reuters/Ipsos, Politico/GWU/Battleground and IBD/CSM/TIPP all claim the race is a tossup, or Obama is in the lead. n n