Update: Hmmm, This is interesting:

The first post-presidential debate poll in critical Ohio shows that Mitt Romney blunted President Obama’s momentum with his winning performance and is now leading the president among Ohioans who say that they are “certain” to vote.

Overall, the race is deadlocked with Obama over Romney 50 percent to 49 percent, according to the poll taken Thursday night.

But among the stunning 92 percent of all voters in the state who say that they are certain to go to the polls on Election Day, Romney leads 51 percent to 48 percent.

I was wondering if the irritated insurgent voter may come out of hiding in the polls before the actual voting takes place. Will be hard to know if a shift is happening due to the debate, or some underlying and long term factor. There is a shift in the Force, that much is for sure. – end update

In a recent post I postulated that the 2010 insurgent voting block that swept the GOP to historic midterm election in 2010 (and showed itself in 2009 VA, NJ, 2011 MA) with wins across all levels of government  was so pissed off with the Political Industrial Complex and politics as usual that they were actively resisting being sampled by pollsters. We may see an indication this is true.

This theory is not very far fetched since Main Street’s irritation with our current Political Class of Screw Ups has reached a fevered pitch – pushed higher and higher by liberals run amok spending 2-3 generations worth of deficit dollars in a huge failed experiment of Government Trickle-Down economics (BTW, I have been using that term here for years – see here, here, here and here for examples). The voters are red-hot fed up, so they don’t want anything to do with politics until it comes to the voting booth.

As I noted in that prior post, a poll has to assume all views are sampled in a manner that reflect their actual percentage in the general population. Statistics 101 – a good representative sample gives you a representative result. But what if one large, intense and uniform group resists the sampling? Well then you get a false result, one that CANNOT factor in the missing data. And in this case, the missing data is pretty much uniformly anti-big-government, and therefore anti-Democrat and anti-Obama.

In the current RCP poll for Ohio, Obama is enjoying a ‘polling’ lead over Romney of 5.5% (49-43.5%). But since Ohio is now in the process of early voting, we actually get to compare absentee vote requests to polling samples to see if there is my suspected gap – and there is:

In a remarkable reversal of fortune for President Obama in Ohio, the GOP has closed the huge gap in absentee ballot requests used by early voters that favored the Democrats and the president in 2008, setting up what one state analyst said could be a Mitt Romney blowout on Election Day.

While in 2008, 33 percent of the 1,158,301 absentee ballots went to Democrats and just 19 percent to registered Republicans, a 14-point gap, this year 29 percent are being requested by Democrats and 24 percent by Republicans, a five-point gap.

And in a sign that the enthusiasm of 2008 voters is depressed, just 638,997 absentee ballots have been requested…

Bold is obviously mine. So let me help those out whose eyes glaze over and go into a trance when numbers are presented. In 2008:

• Democrats requested 382,239 absentee ballots
• Republicans requested 220, 077
• The rest is 602,316 (lets just model these as ‘independents’ for arguments sake)

In 2008 Obama won Ohio by 51-47%, and he took independents by 54-44%. This is clearly not what is happening now.

Based on the numbers above, 2010 looks like this:

• Democrat requested 185,309 ballots (50% less than 4 years ago)
• Republicans requested 153, 359 (30% less than 4 years ago).

So the Democrat intensity is way, way down. If you look at the 2008 D/R ratio it was 1.7 (meaning for every GOP voter there was 1.7 Dem voters). In 2010 that ratio is 1.2. In 2008 the GOP voters were nearly outnumbered 2-1, today it is near parity.

But that us not all, the  independent voters this year are clearly opposed to President Obama (as has been seen in almost all polls). If Romney has independents in Ohio, he wins because the Dems and GOP are at near parity.

The news is even worse when you dive into the details of the story:

The Republicans have shrunk the gap nine percent overall since 2008, but when we examine key counties in Ohio, the numbers become even more dramatic.

–Champaign County: Was +3% GOP, now +23% GOP – 20 point shift.

–Columbiana County: Was +9% DEM, now +9% GOP – 18 point shift.

–Crawford County: Was +3% DEM, now +12% GOP – 15 point shift.

More counties are listed in the story, but they all show the same trend. So how is it the polls show a race similar to 2008 (Obama +4%), but the absentee voting pattern shows a Romney win?

Could be my theory was correct after all. A group of monolithic and determined voters are actively refusing to be sampled. Or, the Dem turnout is more depressed than anyone could imagine. Either way, Obama looks to be heading for a shellacking in November.

Tags: 2012 elections, Absentee Ballots, Early Voting, Ohio