The release of a new swing state poll from Purple Poll Strategies confirms what we have been seeing for months: the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney is looking like a dead heat. Romney has closed the gap nationally in this poll from a 4-point deficit to only 2 points with state polls in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado producing similar results that are well within the margin of error. Despite an avalanche of spending by both sides in these and other battleground states, neither the president nor his challenger has been able to build a statistically significant lead. That ought to leave Democrats and Republicans wondering whether there is anything they can do to create any daylight between the two contenders.
The reasons for this stalemate are complex, but it boils down to a situation where both the president and Romney have strengths and weaknesses that seem to balance each other out. As Sean Trende noted last week at RealClearPolitics.com, the remarkable consistency of poll results that tend to show Obama with a slight lead among registered voters and a tie when it is narrowed down to likely voters is based on the fact that neither side seems able to deliver a knockout punch. The president is not popular and his main accomplishments are viewed negatively. But Romney is also not terribly well-liked. Even more important in Trende’s view is that while the economy is in bad shape, it is not that much worse than it was 2000 and 2004. Which means that no matter how much mud the Democrats sling at Romney or how hard the GOP hits the president on unpopular policies like ObamaCare, we are probably doomed to an election that will be as close as those two squeakers.
That sets up a fall campaign that will see both parties spending large sums of money to influence the relatively tiny portion of the electorate that is undecided. Unless something happens to the nation’s economy that will either considerably brighten or darken the outlook, it may not matter how much cash Republicans and Democrats spend. In an environment in which the margin for error is so small, that will magnify the importance of any mistakes made by the two candidates as well as marginal shifts in the economy that may be interpreted as either harbingers of a genuine recovery or more financial trouble.
That may put more pressure on Romney, whose public image is less well-defined and who labors under the challenge of toppling an incumbent who has more than the usual array of advantages that come with his post because of the historic nature of his presidency. But Obama’s inability to credibly talk about class warfare — which is increasingly seen as the centerpiece to his campaign — tends to offset the Camelot treatment he gets from the mainstream press. Both men are eminently beatable but not necessarily by each other. Which means we may be looking at the same poll numbers until they start counting the real votes in November.
This is way too early to assume a close race. I recall that Dukakis seemed to be ahead of Bush 1 in 1988 but began losing ground as soon as the Republican convention ended even with Bush choosing an extremely unenhancing running mate.
At this point in the 1980 campaign, Carter was ahead of Reagan who walloped Carter in the election. I think that history will repeat itself and (barring any major errors on Romney's part or some other 'October Surprise') Obama will lose by a significant margin.
When you dig into the details of the polling, Jonathan has a solid argument; the polls may remain very close until Election Day. You would ordinarliy expect to see a president with a 47% approval, or below, to lose the election by better than 5%. That would be a 12:00am call on Election Night – pretty early. However, Romney is not well defined to those just starting to pay attention and his negatives are matching the president's. That's a little troublesome. At this point, it is almost impossible to see how Obama blows out Romney. Romney can still win with a large margin, but, as the polling points out, he hasn't reached that point yet, and has actually move backwards a little in those swing states. Today, it is close. It remains to be seen whether or not it stays close. However, according to the polling, it is more likely it stays close for the foreseeable future.
To me, what this says is that nothing's going to change until something changes.
How those voting machines in Miami-Dade County working?
The situation isn't that Romney isn't "terribly well-liked." It's that he isn't terribly well-known, especially by people who aren't in swing states or contested primary states but to a considerable degree by everybody. I think we'll see a substantial post convention bounce for Romney when he gets a chance to introduce himself in person to the low-information voter. People are reserving judgment until they can see for themselves; when they do he will look pretty good. Obama has given us Jimmy Carter's second term, and 2012 will give us a second 1980.
GOOD POINTS, Mahon01.
If Romney first and foremost makes a sane choice for his vp running mate and can articulate clearly how and why Obama is responsible for the mess we are all in,RIGHT NOW; as well as describing a well thought out brilliant plan to put the country on the right course, he should prevail.
I expect Obama Team to try to paint Romney as some kind of racist bigot. Romney has to be prepared.
Romney has one big advantage over Obama, a friend, a brilliant strategist who can and will advise him, one who works out of Jerusalem. It could make a difference, ‘at the end of the day’.
So, I ask, do the polls skew Democrat, as I've seen with many polls the past few years?
Exactly! n nWe have seen poll after poll that has skewed results by oversampling Democrats. Not going to seriously consider a poll revelatory of anything if it does not give the D/R/I breakdown of it's sample. The relevance or lack there of starts and finishes right there. Not having the D/R/I breakdown right out front makes the results suspicious from the git go.
Bottom line is that no incumbent has been re-elected with job approvals less than 50% going into an election. El Presidente's approvals have been stuck in the 40's for about 2 years! Short of Romney going insane, Obama is at maximum support right now. He has nowhere to go but down. It's just a question of when the tipping point occurs. But you can bet the farm that at some point in September or October, support is going to start draining away from Obama. We've had 4 years to know him and dislike him. No one but his hard-core Obamabots are going to stick with him. They may not love Romney, but most voters are going to jump ship on Obama once they see that other people are doing so. Obama is doing everything he can right now to stay in the 40% range because he cannot afford to let the numbers slip below 40% or the rout begins.