As I wrote last night, liberal analysts are right when they point out that the preponderance of state polls have greatly strengthened President Obama’s hopes for re-election. But a couple of the latest ones published this morning contradict that conviction, which caused New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to claim only stupid people think the election is not a cinch for Obama. One Democratic-leaning pollster has Romney ahead by one point in supposedly deep-blue Michigan, while a new Pennsylvania poll shows the race there deadlocked.
These may be outliers, but even a Nobel laureate (and, as the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto likes to say, “former Enron advisor”) like Krugman is smart enough to understand that if Romney wins Pennsylvania and Michigan, Obama has virtually no chance to get to 270 electoral votes. The point here is that while we are all rightly focused on who will win Ohio, the president’s hold on a number of states that were thought to be likely Democrat wins is far from secure. What’s happened in the last month since the Denver debate turned the race around is not just a surge of Republican strength in the South and the West but a surprising comeback for the GOP in the rust belt and the Midwest.
The Michigan poll is from the Democratic firm of Baydoun/Foster sponsored by WJBK Fox Channel 2 in Detroit, and has a sample that has a nine percent edge for the Democrats in terms of partisan identification. More tellingly, it is a fairly large number of respondents for a state poll — 1,913 likely voters — and a relatively low margin of error at 2.24 percent. Yet shockingly it shows Romney up by more than half a percentage point: 46.86 percent to 46.24 percent.
It should be specified that most other Michigan polls are still showing the president with a lead there. Another Democratic pollster, Public Policy Polling, has Obama up 52-46 percent in their latest poll. Just to confuse things, that poll has a smaller Democratic edge in partisan identification at only six percent but it is also the product of a much smaller sample — only 700 likely voters — and therefore has a margin of error that is nearly double that of the Baydoun/Foster poll.
In Pennsylvania, a Susquehanna poll sponsored by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review shows the race in Pennsylvania a virtual tie. Indeed the poll’s sample of 800 likely voters showed 378 say they would vote for Romney and 372 for Obama. Again, Susquehanna is a bit of an outlier in that it has shown more strength for Romney throughout the campaign than other polls. The Real Clear Politics average of polls for Pennsylvania still shows the president up by more than four points. But it should also be pointed that a clear difference between Susquehanna and the others is the same one that has been stirring discussion about virtually all the presidential polls on both the state and the national level: partisan identification. Susquehanna (whose sample is larger than that of the other Pennsylvania polls) shows a six-percentage point advantage for the Democrats. By contrast, two other polls that show Obama ahead in the state, PPP and Franklin & Marshall, had samples with 10 and nine point edges for the Democrats.
Those numbers make the contradictions between these polls more explicable. It can’t be said often enough that turnout is the key to this election. Those polls that are assuming a large advantage for the Democrats are pointing toward an Obama win. Those that are not are favorable to Romney. It’s as simple as that. If the Obama campaign machine can manufacture a replica of the 2008 electorate, the polls and the analysts predicting and Obama win will be vindicated. If not, then Romney may be on his way to victory and Krugman will be the one sitting in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
Come on, Commentary folks. Let's see your specific predictions.
As emergency and restored polling places fail throughout New York and New Jersey, Dade and Broward counties manage to cast a majority of their votes for a) Lydon Larouche and b) The Thighmaster's Suzanne Sommers, while Republicans throughout Ohio report that attempts to vote on electronic ballots for Gov. Romney result in a loud buzz and a flashing error message "But that Barack Obama has such a nice crease in his pants, are you sure you don't want to change your mind?" In Chicago alone, the reported vote count exceeds the live population by a factor of five. Suits and countersuits fly, the Supreme Court is forced to adjourn when Justice Roberts goes into hiding, and the House of Representatives bogs down in unresolved squabbling. Finally, Rutherford B. Hayes is elected as the next President of the United States.
Sounds about right to me too.
The definition of the word "stupid" is widely misunderstood. Use of the word long predates the Stanford-Binet scales. In ordinary parlance, stupid is as stupid does. Or believes. n nPaul Krugman is stupid. So is Barack Obama. Both are overcredentialed, fashionable among the intellectuals and elites, and extremely lucky in their careers. Doesn't change the fact that they are stupid. n nA stupid man finds truth in wishful fantasy rather than in circumstances as as they are. His judgement is skewed toward hopeful self delusion; his expression is propaganda. n nBTW: "Decimation" is another word widely misused during this campaign. Obama, for one instance, claims to have decimated half of Al Quaida. n nDecimation was a form of discipline in the military ranks of Ancient Rome. A legion that shamed itself in battle was not infrequently singled out for this punishment. Lots were drawn and ten percent of the offending legion were singled out for execution by their brother legionnaires. A quick and easy death countered the disciplinary effect so slower, more painful methods of dispatching the unlucky ten percent were employed by imaginative commanders. n n"We decimated half of Al Qauaida" is the locution of an undereducated, overcredentialled and stupid Commander in Chief who probably can't find Rome on a map.
So, you're saying that Obama will not still the oceans, hold back global warming, save all the polar bears and bring an era of peace and free condoms by Tuesday?
I don't know about oceans, global warming and polar bears but this putz couldn't find where to put a free condom with a flashlight.
Ha ha! Wouldn't have to, if it was a fleshlight. Tra-da-boom.
Fleshlight is Yiddish. Cool guys in grey bomber jackets don't speak it.
Hmm. Methinks you need to google fleshlight. With all the filters off.
Live and learn. Modern technology knows no limit. Not Obama's style, though. Google Barack and Michelle's down low lifestyle.
Ah, Besht… I knew you were a Proste Yid. Doesn't mean simple, either. Means common. A poyer. A peasant.
Yeah, Besht, Jake gets it. All the same, the baboon who sired Jake didn't read The Forward. Even a lowly baboon doesn't stoop to such drek.
The baboon, incidentally, was a child of the Lithuanian Jewish renaissance. A Litvak who studied at Volozhen, Slabodka, Kaminetz and Yeshivat Harav Kook. The whore's twat who squatted for the Litvak baboon was the daughter of a lecturer in German Literature who was among the very first women and the first Jews accepted into a European university. She was the Galitzianer in the family. n nMerely keeping you abreast of your betters, Besht.
ROFLMAO! n nThat's it, I fold! Anyway, the hairs on my neck are tingling, which means the the site Mod is about to swoop down with his/her scissors.
I'm enjoying the delusional nature of the left. When Axelrod was told he had basically no advantage in early voting in Ohio (and no one mentioned that Indies are breaking 10%+ for Romney) he just kinda shrugged it off. Then we get a poll showing Mitt up +1 in MICHIGAN. This is not a state event. Party ID has shifted from +10 Dem in 2008 to +3 Rep in 2012. This is a monumental change that the Obama campaign has been exacerbating by providing only negative attacks against Romney and no concrete plan for the future.
If you go back and look at a lot of the polls you will that they over sampled democrats and have been. PPP is a very liberal polling firm.
Michelle's email this morning asked for almost 14,000 new GOTV volunteers, just for Miami, Florida. Seems like the symptom of a low enthusiasm campaign to me, and how much they are losing in South Florida. Then I got Debbie W-S email touting Haaretz' endorsement of Obama. n nI sure would not want to be a Jewish voter in the Philadelphia, or Cleveland suburbs
14,000 Get out the Vote volunteers, if they were winning they wouldn't need that many volunteers.
Too bad Bretbart and O'keefe destroyed Acorn.
I am really nervous about this election because I can't get a straight picture from the Propaganda machine that is the Democrats. But I think if they are trying to mobile 14,000 Get Out the Vote People in FL I would be willing to bet that the Obama administration.
We know that Romney has all of McCain's states, plus Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado. And according to the polls, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are tied. In a true coin flip, it is highly likely that Romney will win at least 1 out of 3. If he does win any of those 3, he wins the election. Wisconsin and Minnesota are now also tied. If he wins either of those plus any other remaining toss-up state, then he wins. This includes Iowa and New Hampshire, where he appears to be ahead. n nObama is actually the one with a very narrow path to victory, needing to win almost all remaining toss-up states to eke out a victory. Obama's absolute ceiling is 281. Romney's is 347, with still some room to grow.
Not being an Ohio resident, a civil servant a UAW worker or black, my vote is apparently less than useless so I don't get an opinion.
Ah, but you are a woman, and so your opinion and vote are already gender-predetermined.
It should be noted that the PPP poll mentioned above, with a 4.48% margin of error, therefore gives the poll results as a statistical dead heat. While I would be (pleasantly) surprised if Romney were to win in Pennsylvania or Michigan (which I think is somewhat more likely given his history with the state) I think it much more likely that he will win Ohio, Virginia and Colorado and squeak through with some other small state. We can always hope.
Oh no, not for commonness, Besht. Like Icarus, your comment flew too close to the sun and melted its wax wings. Pride goes before the fall they like to say, but how dull without that pride, I say. I hope you saved a copy; t'was a hilariously saucy vignette fit for Yiddish theatre, well, an adults-only "late ninght" version of such, although I'd have thought "hoovering" (vacuum-cleaning for the unlearned) was strictly a British term which has fallen into disuse. And thanks for the Marx Brothers link; one forgets what masterpieces these guys turned out.
Obama camp can talk about their magical GOTV machine all they want. Even if they have it running at full power they won't be able to recreate the 2008 electorate because he isn't running against McCain. Romney and the GOP crushed the Dem GOTV machine during the WI recall election and, at the very least, they will be able to keep up with them this time around.
Democrats who claim that an Obama victory is a sure thing are intellectually dishonest at best. Romney is either ahead of Obama or close enough to shove his tongue down Obama's throat in all reputable polls. Furthermore, all these polls are oversampling Democrats, and in some cases polling proportionally less Republicans then those who voted in 2008. This means that Romney has more independents then Obama and some Democrats.