Latest Gallup Poll shows Romney Leading 47% to 45%

[spacejamz]

http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

7 day rolling average results are on the right side...

I have relegated myself to the fact that Obama will probably win in Nov....But how is this even possible?

 

[nehalem256]

Right above the results are Obama Approval/Disapproval ratings

46% aprove 49% disapprove

Notice how closely they match the election poll

 

[Wreckem]

http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

7 day rolling average results are on the right side...

I have relegated myself to the fact that Obama will probably win in Nov....But how is this even possible?

National polls don't mean much when battle ground state polls show Obama leading in enough of them to win the election.

Its quite possible Romney will pull an Al Gore and actually get more of the popular vote, but lose in the electoral college. If I was a betting person, I would bet on that.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Polls are not always that accurate. and unless they are biased toward the swing states, they will be worthless.

then also, many people will poll their heads and vote their hearts.

If gas continues to creep upward; Obama will slide downward.

All Romney has to do is keep pounding on the domestic results.

Are you better off now than 4 years ago.

He has two foreign policy points and a bunch of negative points domestically.

 

[nehalem256]

National polls don't mean much when battle ground state polls show Obama leading in enough of them to win the election.

Its quite possible Romney will pull an Al Gore and actually get more of the popular vote, but lose in the electoral college. If I was a betting person, I would bet on that.

That might be even more fun than an electoral college tie.

Do you think that the Democrats would call for Obama to stand aside and support the will of the people?

 

[Infohawk]

First of all, different polls are saying different things so it's not like Romney is dominating at this point.

He is in the running though. How is it possible? When the economy / job market sucks, people generally blame the incumbent whether it's fair or not. The fact that Obama is doing as well as he is seems is significant and favorable to the Democrats.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

This actually reflects poorly on Romney/Ryan. Normally the selection of a VP gives a 4+% bump in the polls and nothing happened at all. My surmise is that what was gained from Reps is offset in independent losses.

 

[Wreckem]

That might be even more fun than an electoral college tie.

Do you think that the Democrats would call for Obama to stand aside and support the will of the people?

Just like Bush stepped aside in 2000? Oh wait...

 

[Anarchist420]

Voter turnout is going to be low, that's for sure. What they're going to is make voting mandatory. They may have put these two up for an excuse to make voting mandatory as they knew damn good and well rombama sucks ass.

I'm not going to vote and i wish no one else would either. Voting, especially here, is a sham.

 

[nehalem256]

Just like Bush stepped aside in 2000? Oh wait...

Its a joke.

About how much Democrats complained about Gore winning the popular vote, while losing the electoral vote.

The equivalent questions would be if the Republicans would whine like the democrats did in 2000

 

[K1052]

They've generally been within margin of error for quite a while now. I don't expect any significant change until the debates, barring anything unusual happening.

 

[First]

RCP shows him up 1.5 in aggregate national polls, which doesn't adjust at all for the (small) bump of Ryan's announcement.

Reliable statistical analysis shows him likely to win roughly 300 electoral votes and the popular vote, with just under a 70% chance of winning.

Intrade gives him just under a 60% chance of winning.

Plus, Gallup (and Rasmussen) have a Republican-leading house effect of sorts.

Overall, smart money is on Obama for the WH, Senate staying Dem (even w/o Akin, due to VP tiebreaker), and House staying solidly Republican (losing a handful of seats).

 

[diesbudt]

Voter turnout is going to be low, that's for sure. What they're going to is make voting mandatory. They may have put these two up for an excuse to make voting mandatory as they knew damn good and well rombama sucks ass.

I'm not going to vote and i wish no one else would either. Voting, especially here, is a sham.

I am not voting. Because I refuse to support either candidate's government as I feel they are not the direction I want/good/what I believe we need.

 

[zinfamous]

Polls are not always that accurate. and unless they are biased toward the swing states, they will be worthless.

then also, many people will poll their heads and vote their hearts.

If gas continues to creep upward; Obama will slide downward.

All Romney has to do is keep pounding on the domestic results.

Are you better off now than 4 years ago.

He has two foreign policy points and a bunch of negative points domestically.

What you're saying, basically. If Romney says anything that doesn't have the words "economy of jobs" in it, he will lose on every issue.

Of course, this is why he keeps his taxes hidden. The info therein will so clearly piss off the mass electorate that has already been conditioned into this class warfare mentality by both parties, that it would be an outright slaughter at the polls.


I feel that it is dead even right now, simply because of, well....the actual success that we are experiencing economically is mostly attributed to not having experienced the worst of it (avoiding a serious depression).

People don't vote on what didn't happen. also, the VP bump reflects latest polls, I imagine.

 

[EagleKeeper]

What you're saying, basically. If Romney says anything that doesn't have the words "economy of jobs" in it, he will lose on every issue.

Of course, this is why he keeps his taxes hidden. The info therein will so clearly piss off the mass electorate that has already been conditioned into this class warfare mentality by both parties, that it would be an outright slaughter at the polls.


I feel that it is dead even right now, simply because of, well....the actual success that we are experiencing economically is mostly attributed to not having experienced the worst of it (avoiding a serious depression).

People don't vote on what didn't happen. also, the VP bump reflects latest polls, I imagine.

You may have seen the ads where Obama goes after Romney tax return rate.
Ignoring that the numbers are that way because of the tax system; not the Romney did anything funny.

Now release more returns that have the same thing and that increases.

Look at all the idiots here that jumped on the tax rate when the 2010 returns were released; ignoring the type of income.

Obama is counting on those same idiots making a bigger fuss.

 

[mshan]

"Regular readers will know that I generally refrain from making comments on the demographics within an individual poll. They will vary a bit from survey to survey based both on random variance and the different assumptions that pollsters make about just who will turn out. The random variance can be reduced by taking an average of surveys — and if pollsters have a persistent tendency to favor one candidate over another, we can account for that with our house effects adjustment, which is designed to detect and counteract these tendencies.

But once in a great while, a poll comes along with methodology that is so implausible that it deserves some further comment. The Foster McCollum White Baydoun poll of Florida is one such survey.

The poll was weighted to a demographic estimate that predicts that just 2 percent of Florida voters will be 30 or younger. It’s a decent bet that turnout will be down some among younger voters this year, but that isn’t a realistic estimate. In 2008, according to exit polls, 15 percent of voters in Florida were between 18 and 30.

The poll also assumed that 10 percent of voters will be between the ages of 31 and 50. In 2008, the actual percentage was 36 percent, according to the exit survey.

The poll projected Latinos to be 7 percent of the turnout in Florida, against 14 percent in 2008. And it has African-American turnout at 10 percent, down from 13 percent.

If the turnout numbers look something like that in November, then Mr. Obama will lose Florida badly. He’ll also lose almost every other state; his electoral map might look a lot like Walter Mondale’s.

But the share of voters 50 and younger in Florida is not going to drop all the way from half the electorate to roughly one-tenth of it, as the poll assumed. That is far beyond the range you can get from reasonable disagreement about methods, or from sampling error. It looks like the result from a from a badly-designed statistical model that never got a sanity check."

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/aug-20-when-the-polling-gets-weird/

Follow swing state polling in electoral college, and in particular, pay attention to where campaigns and superPacs are spending their money, and where candidate and his surrogates keep returning, in September and October to get better idea of real state of race. e. g. David Axelrod apparently told Politico that he felt North Carolina is a true toss-up. If that is what their private polling says and is not just spin, that's a very bad sign for Romney. IIRC, Nate Silver (538) had article in last few years about how relative positioning of polling between states can give good clues to state of race (different demographics and voting patterns should give baseline homefield advantage to generic Democrat or Republican in any given cycle).

Stephanie Cutter, Obama campaign spokesman, this morning (Morning Joe?) said although Obama going to get badly outspent, they are projecting turnout to be similar to 2008 (?). edit: (found it. Being badly outspent comments start around 8:15, ground game like 2008 start around 9:45 mark http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#48749512)

If that's true, probably going to end up being blowout win for Obama (http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/5780/), even if Romney's campaign apparatus wasn't utterly inept and incompetent.

 

[mchammer187]

Polls are not always that accurate. and unless they are biased toward the swing states, they will be worthless.

then also, many people will poll their heads and vote their hearts.

If gas continues to creep upward; Obama will slide downward.

All Romney has to do is keep pounding on the domestic results.

Are you better off now than 4 years ago.

He has two foreign policy points and a bunch of negative points domestically.

I am actually way better off now than I was 4 years ago and many people are. So everyone that is should vote for Obama automatically?

Dow was at 8000 toward the end of 2008.
S&P 500 was at 950ish

Unemployment is about the same about 8%.

So if you are one of the unemployed probably not or those that lost their house
but for everyone else I think most people are.

I'm not saying the economy is functioning great or anything but I am gonna argue that most people (more than half) are going to be better off than they were 4 years ago.

I think if you are going to ask that question than Romney will lose. A better question would be where we are now and where we should be but that is going to be all speculation.

 

[mshan]

Even if unemployment rate is same now as then, back then people who had good jobs were probably still fearful they were going to get laid off or that their employer was about to go out of business completely.

For those now with good full time jobs and have skills that employer knows might be difficult to find again if business picks up, feeling of job security is much better (might be working overtime and even getting slight pay raise recently, too).

 

[zinfamous]

You may have seen the ads where Obama goes after Romney tax return rate.
Ignoring that the numbers are that way because of the tax system; not the Romney did anything funny.

Now release more returns that have the same thing and that increases.

Look at all the idiots here that jumped on the tax rate when the 2010 returns were released; ignoring the type of income.

Obama is counting on those same idiots making a bigger fuss.

By the way, I actually agreed with your comments. It was confusing, because I should have separated the first two sentences of my reply.

 

[cybrsage]

First of all, different polls are saying different things so it's not like Romney is dominating at this point.

He is in the running though. How is it possible? When the economy / job market sucks, people generally blame the incumbent whether it's fair or not. The fact that Obama is doing as well as he is seems is significant and favorable to the Democrats.

Ordinarily I would say yes, but apparently something else is behind our votes now. Look at Bush winning his second term while having both a bad economy AND fighting an unpopular war.

 

[OrByte]

Serious question;

As long as Nate Silver has been working statistics/polls/political calculations how often is he wrong?

 

[hal2kilo]

Wow, since when are presidents elected by popular vote. It's the electoral college that counts. The polls that matter are of the swings states.

 

[Pens1566]

Serious question;

As long as Nate Silver has been working statistics/polls/political calculations how often is he wrong?

Depends on your definition of wrong. Unless your definition is very narrow margins, then he's always right on big time national races. It's stunning.

 

[OrByte]

Depends on your definition of wrong. Unless your definition is very narrow margins, then he's always right on big time national races. It's stunning.

ok good point...when talking margins that is almost an impossible task to predict.

But, on national big time races...I don't recall him ever picking the wrong guy.

 

[mshan]

"As long as Nate Silver has been working statistics/polls/political calculations how often is he wrong? "

He called 50 / 51 states (missed Indiana) in 2008, along with all senate races in 2008.

However, then he was essentially unknown blogger dabbling in presidential statistics (IIRC, he's actual job was statistician at Baseball Prospectus), but he now is well know part of establishment and affiliated with New York Times.

My gut impression (and that is all it is) is he is underestimating Obama's edge right now, perhaps to establish his mainstream credibility.

But again, he is know part of the establishment, and it is quite possible he may now have more motivation to try and shape the news, rather than just report it.

Romney seems to have unlimited superpac money, so probably want to focus more on where Obama campaign spends it's money in September and October, and which states he or his surrogates keep returning to for campaign stumps in person.


If it's Pennsylvania or Michigan, Romney is probably really competitive. If it is North Carolina or Missouri, he is probably going for knockout blow (Obama campaign has knocked Romney to the ground, he is wimpering "no mas, no mas", Obama puts a smile on his face, dips his cowboy boot in fresh cow dung, then jams it into Romney's face), with passion.