Let me pose a few questions to those desperately trying not to see the momentum shift to Romney here in the final days of the 2012 election cycle.

Is Florida turning redder or bluer?

Is Virginia or North Carolina turning deep blue and moving out of Romney’s reach?

Is Missouri once again within Obama’s reach as it was in 2008 when McCain barely eked out a win?

What about predictably-blue Pennsylvania?

President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney entered the final days of the presidential race tied in a state that the campaigns only recently began contesting, a Tribune-Review poll shows.

The poll showed the race for Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes locked up at 47 percent in its final week.

Note: President Obama is stuck well below 50% at 47%, and in one key county Obama won by 17% it is now tied.

What about New Hampshire, is it slipping out of anyone’s reach today:

With just three days before the election, a new WMUR Granite State Poll shows the presidential race is a dead heat in New Hampshire.

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are each expected to get 47 percent of the votes, according to the poll

Note: President Obama again is stuck well below 50% at 47%.

What about Iowa, is President Obama moving out or stuck:

Obama is up 5 percentage points in Iowa, leading Republican Mitt Romney 47 percent to 42 percent, according to a new Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, although the results also contain signs of hope for Romney, political strategists said.

Note: Obama again is stuck well below 50% at 47%.

Finally what about Minnesota – a state that has not been red for decades.

The latest from FMWB shows a neck-and-neck race in Michigan with Mitt Romney nosing out to a one point lead (really 0.6), 47 to 46 with 2% Undecided.

Let’s just call it 47-47, since I don’t buy fractions-of-a-percent precision in poll numbers. Not to mention troubles for the President brewing in Wisconsin and Michigan and Oregon. Still seeing that 47% ceiling for the President

Yes, there are D+Gazillion polls out there showing more enthusiasm for President Obaama this cycle than in 2008, creating narrow (if fictional) Obama leads. But these polls are so heavily skewed because of the big secret – defecting Democrats. In 2010 center-left Democrats and independents bolted the Dems and led the GOP to the largest mid term win living memory. We are not in a D+8 election cycle, more like R+4 (which also would be historic, like 2010).

The best reporting on this I have seen is up at RCP today:

Two years after suffering a historic shellacking in the 2010 midterm election, Democrats astonishingly have ignored Main Street Americans’ unhappiness.

That 2010 ejection from the U.S. House, and from state legislatures and governors’ offices across the country, didn’t happen inside the Washington Beltway world.

It didn’t reflect the Democrats’ or the media’s conventional wisdom or voter-turnout models. So it just wasn’t part of their reality.

…

These Main Street Democrats in seven battleground states supported Obama in 2008. Now they are disappointed by his broken pledges: Where is the promised bipartisanship? How could health-care reform become such a mess? What direction is the country going in?

In order to offset losing independents AND a good chunk of Democrats one has to push the turnout models to D+Infinity (and beyond!)

Anyone who thinks the 2010 insurgent voter was satiated after the last two years, they truly live in their own private Idaho. These voters wanted a change in direction from the Obama-Reid-Pelosi disaster. They did not get that change. Now they will take action again, and send the signal again. This time, they will change out the management.

Tags: 2012 elections, Governor Romney, President Obama

A slew of polls are out from WSJ/NBC/Marist showing Obama leads in Ohio and elsewhere. Only problem is the turn out models appear to be devoid of all reality. First, you will want to read this:

While Obama is ahead in early raw voting numbers in Florida and North Carolina, voting expert Michael McDonald, a professor at George Mason University, says Romney has effectively closed the gap enough that strong Republican turnout on Election Day could cost Obama those states.

“It’s going to be difficult for Obama to pull enough ahead to win North Carolina to offset what Romney may do on Election Day,” says McDonald, director of the United States Elections Project. “They’re seeing the same numbers I am seeing.”

…

In its poll, conducted this week, Pew reported that neither Obama nor Romney “has a clear advantage among early voters. This is in sharp contrast to early voting at this point four years ago, which favored Obama by a wide margin.”

This is a two page article that can be boiled down to this: Absentee/Early voting results are showing 2012 is nothing like 2008 when Obama had a huge surge of Hopey/Changey at his back. Now he has the boat anchor of four years of failure around his neck, and the result is he has no edge in turnout. Period.

Added to the other reputable polls that show (a) Governor Romney is winning independents and (b) President Obama’s base is not as energized as 2008, it is clear that in the real world of 2012 this is no repeat of 2008. I would wager, adding the Independent edge Romney has to the small Early/Absentee vote deficit Romney could have if all partisans voted with their party would erase that last little edge.

Now, read this:

I’d spend a half-hour analyzing the latest NBC/WSJ poll conducted by Marist in Ohio shown Obama with a 6-point lead over Romney, 51/45, but all you need to know is this: the D/R/I is 38/29/32 [AJStrata: D+9].  In 2008, the exit polls showed a split of 39/31/30 [AJStrata: D+8], and in 2010 36/37/28 [AJStrata: D-1]..

 More here:

[Ohio} Obama leads by 6.  The party ID a D+9 (snicker).

Absentee/Early voting is not a poll, it is hard, actual data. It is clear: there is no D+ anything out there at the moment. There is fraction of the edge Obama enjoyed in 2008, all of which can be easily erased election day if the 2010 insurgent voters come out en mass.

And they will be out en mass.

Hopefully the WSJ will do something to fix its reputation and denounce these silly statistical fantasies from Marist.

Tags: Marist, Obama, Ohio, Polls, Romney, WSJ

Katrina was a Cat 3 hurricane when she slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005. She was much larger, stronger and deadlier than Little ‘Ol Sandy when She made landfall

Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States.^[3] Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall. At least 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane; total property damage was estimated at $81 billion (2005 USD),^[3] nearly triple the damage brought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.^[4]

Hurricane Sandy was only a Category 1 Hurricane when she slammed into New York City, unfortunately riding on a super high tide. Timing is everything. But due to the population density, Sandy will rival Katrina in dollars cost.

In both cases, proper preparation would have saved lives and money. New Orleans had actually weathered the brunt of Katrina fairly well – until levies broke that were not engineered to the proper specifications. Years of diverting hurricane preparedness money into political largesse had left chinks in the armor of New Orleans. The warnings were there and mostly headed. But it only takes a small crack in the defensive systems to produce an epic failure when faced with this much natural force and fury.

So too with New York. Another city that has been warned over and over that Hurricanes do make land fall high up the east coast:

All that was needed to prevent mass destruction from the storm surge in New York City was a sea barrier of the type that protects major cities in Europe, some scientists and engineers say.

The multibillion-dollar price tag of such a project has been a hindrance, but may appear more palatable after the damage from Superstorm Sandy has been tallied.

“The time has come. The city is finally going to have to face this,” said oceanography professor Malcolm J. Bowman at Long Island’s Stony Brook University. He has warned for years of the potential for a catastrophic storm surge in New York and has advocated for a barrier.

Instead of enforcing a ban on large sodas, Bloomie (Mayor Bloomberg) should have been thinking about what happens if even a small, Cat 1 hurricane hits the most densely populated area on the East Coast. Especially if it hits at high tide.

Now they know. But Bloomie is not showing he gets it.

I can’t figure out what disgusts me more, the fact small-imagination liberals could not fathom how large and devastating nature is (and therefore blamed the Bush administration for what is simply a natural disaster) or that those same duplicitous liberals now turn a blind eye to the suffering in New York? Where is the outrage we saw against President Bush when he faced a larger natural force? More here at Hot Air on Bloomie’s Folly.

And of course, ‘Ol Al Gore is out there blaming nature’s own natural gas (CO2) for something that has happened thousands of times on the East Coast of North America. Watch out New York, Gore would divert funding for barrier walls so he could establish a carbon exchange and line his pockets to heat is massive mansions and fuel personal jets.

So, how would the media reacted if George W Bush had callously, coldly diverted critical resources (like food, power, and shelter) from the after math in Katrina to run a marathon?

The ING New York City Marathon is going on as planned Sunday and today Mayor Bloomberg is getting some harsh words about his choice not to cancel this event. “Fox and Friends” Friday morning talks about the massive generators that Bloomberg plans to use for the NYC event and suggest that these generators could help so many Hurricane Sandy victims instead. Alfred P. Doblin from North Jersey.com on Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 calls Bloomberg’s statement about not canceling the event, “Insensitive and idiotic.”

The only idiot here is Bozo Bloomie and his media fawns.

Generators are needed to pump the gas which so many people need right now to move relief supplies and working crews in to restore services. NYC hotels are full of refugees that were on the verge of being evicted back onto the cold streets to run Bloomie’s show. And it was not until the cries from thousands of saner minds finally got through his thick skull, did Bloomie finally wake up and smell the disaster around him.

All the while President Obama turned away and said it was a local issue as he headed back onto the campaign trail.

Disgusting.

Update: Was anyone really prepared for the post storm relief effort when you read this:

“Red Cross is here with hot chocolate and cookies. We need blankets, we need pillows, we need clothing. We can get hot chocolate and cookies, we need help!” resident Jodi Hannula said.

Really? NY and America better read this story about how PRIVATE COMPANIES are better prepared than the bloated government bureaucracies:

Waffle House Inc. has 1,600 restaurants stretching from the mid-Atlantic to Florida and across the Gulf Coast, leaving it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. Other businesses, of course, strive to reopen as quickly as possible after disasters. But the Waffle House, which spends almost nothing on advertising, has built a marketing strategy around the goodwill gained from being open when customers are most desperate…

The company fully embraced its post-disaster business strategy after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Seven of its restaurants were destroyed and 100 more shut down, but those that reopened quickly were swamped with customers.

The company decided to beef up its crisis-management processes. Senior executives developed a manual for opening after a disaster, bulked up on portable generators, bought a mobile command center and gave employees key fobs with emergency contacts.

Read the whole article because the only sane conclusion to this mess is we should hand over disaster relief to Waffle House. Big Government should be ashamed.

Tags: Bloomberg, George W Bush, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, President Obama

Updates Galore! – at the end of post

A very interesting study is out from a left wing think tank that may have the explanation for why the polls are all skewed to Obama compared to what people see as a Romney surge on the ground and nationally. It has to do with a migration in the country from left to right  related to party ID. Ed Morrissey has the scoop:

Their chart shows the problem for Democrats in stark relief:

This is the party ID shift in the swing states where this election will be won or lost. I have questioned many times this week whether high Dem turnout in the early/absentee voting was going to generate a Obama win. The argument being Dems may be jumping ship from Obama in higher numbers than thought, especially if you are still registered a Democrat but now consider yourself an independent.

Follow the thinking here using NV. NV early voting is showing two things: a much better showing by the GOP than 2008 AND a good sized independent showing as well. If we look at NV (which has a 90,000 registration edge of the GOP) we see them losing just under 1% of their voters, with about twice as many showing up in the GOP column (-0.8 to +1.4).

But few go from Dem to GOP. Most transition through Independent along the way, and some (like me) never leave the independent group.

Look how independents grew in the state since 2008 – by nearly 20%!

Ed points to another site that sees the same phenomena in FL:

If you look at Florida’s voter registration records you’ll see something curious. The number of registered Democrat voters has decreased by 141,000. Republicans have increased by 73,000 and Independents increased by 282,000.

That tells you a large number of Dems moved to Independent, and only a small number of Independents/Dems moved to the GOP.

As Ed notes, if you are winning the Independent vote by double digits (like Romney is) and these are the underlying changes in voter ID (and therefore turnout modelling) Romney could be heading to a big win. Remember, some people vote a new ID before they actually take it on formally. So I would assume a lot of Dems and Independents are voting to the right of the current partisan ID, which they may shed next year.

Update: Right on cue the WaPo has a story on Obama defections:

Among the most likely to defect are the usual suspects: Republicans and conservatives who crossed over to vote for Obama in 2008, along with white evangelicals and white men without college degrees. Obama already struggled with these groups, so no surprise here.

What’s perhaps most striking is who the rest of Obama’s defectors are. While much of the focus has been on how Obama has turned off white men, his defectors run the gamut.

Obama is losing 16 percent of white non-evangelical Protestants who previously supported him to Romney, but also 19 percent of white Catholics. While he has lost 21 percent of his non-college-educated white men, he has also lost 17 percent of white male college graduates and 18 percent of women who didn’t attain four-year degrees. And Obama has lost between 11 percent and 14 percent of supporters in all three age groups: under 40 years old, 40-64, and 65-plus.

Click graph to enlarge:

Update: Even CBS News is noting the growing shift to Independent (i.e., Tea Party/Libertarian/Small-Government voter):

In the swing states, the number of independent or unaffiliated voters has risen since 2008. For instance, in Florida, the number of unaffiliated voters in 2008 was 2.1 million; this year it’s 2.5 million – more than Republican and Democratic voter registration combined. North Carolina was home to 1.4 million unaffiliated voters in 2008 and 1.7 million now. Republicans there saw no gain in voter registration in the past four years and the Democrats only 100,000. Nevada boasts 40,000 more non-partisan voters this year while the Republicans lost 9,000 voters and the Democrats gained only 10,000. In Colorado, unaffiliated voters surpassed registered Republicans and Democrats. (Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin do not ask voters for party affiliation.)

The evidence behind the growing number of independents is abundant. A recent Pew Research poll from August shows a similar trend. Based on interviews with 13,000 registered voters across the country, one-third of respondents indentified as independents – an increase from 27 percent in 2004. Although personal identification does not equate to official voter registration status, the findings are clear: a large number of Americans are shifting away from political parties.

To shift away from political parties is also to shift away from political (i.e., big government) solutions. the 2010 insurgent voting bloc is still out there – and growing in strength. Pollsters beware!

Recent polls, however, show that Mr. Obama will have a difficult time replicating those numbers this time. The latest Quinnipiac/CBS News/New York Times poll shows that Mitt Romney is leading among independent likely voters in Virginia by a striking 21 points. He is also leading among independents in Ohio by six points and 5 points in Florida.

…

With 18 percent of early voters in Florida not associated with the major political parties and 40 percent in Iowa not affiliated, it’s a number that the campaigns have to worry about.

Update: Great analysis of early voting in swing states – lots of good news for the GOP. And the good Obama news seems a bit ‘stretched’…

Tags: Early Voting, Election 2012, Party ID, Polls, Swing States

As a follow up to yesterday’s brief post (traveling again!) I was going to note a strange missing element to this cycle’s swing state debate: Missouri

Where did the Show Me State go?

I can remember a presidential race where MO was consider the bell-weather. See here from circa 2008:

Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, has suggested states such Colorado, Virginia, and Ohio, will be the bellwethers of 2008. But history makes Missouri difficult to ignore. A majority of Missouri voters have sided with the prevailing candidate in every presidential election since 1960. The election four years prior represents their only miss in a century, since St. Louis, the state’s largest city, hosted the 1904 World’s Fair.

That track record has earned the state a place of respect in the 2008 presidential campaigns.

MO was barely won by John McCain in 2008 by one of the smallest of margins (0.1%). It probably was one of the few states not to go Obama (while VA went overboard). So why is it this year not even close and MO is now is solid GOP? The RCP poll average as of today shows Romney +11.2%! Is this not a clear sign Obama has lost his mojo from 4 years ago to go from tied to -11%?

Along these lines keep an eye on Battleground Watch for an in depth and daily analysis of two key counties in Nevada. The early voting data he is seeing is not a good sign for Obama, who is supposedly leading in the RCP average of polls in this state. Take Bob’s Washoe County update from yesterday:

The aggregate Washoe lead now stands at 375 more ballots cast by Republicans than Democrats, a far cry from the 12k advantage Democrats enjoyed in 2008.  Washoe’s going red people … get used to it.  If Romney is winning a majority of the Independent vote and the Clark GOP keeps its close . . .

Big contrast in the running tallies

2012 thru Day 12	2008 Through Day 12
Dem – 39700 (40.9%)	Dem – 43357 (47.86%)
GOP – 39054 (40.3%)	GOP – 31711 (34.99%)
NP – 18202 (18.8%)	NP – 15570 (17.18%)

This is a large turn around from 2008, with Dems losing a 13% advantage in 2008 to now being tied. Strange how that 13% shift mirrors the MO shift – just saying. And this shift is similar to the 4 year cahnges seen in blue states listed in my last post (CT -14%, MI -14%, MN -8% and PA – 7%).

It is clear many pollsters are banking on a Dem turnout advantage equal or better than 2008. I find that unlikely, which is why many of us think the pollster are going to get a rude awakening (as are robotic statistical analysis like Nate Silver’s that simply churn GIGO). I wager Obama is losing a lot more Dems than polls indicate along with the lower energy on the left, so I think we will see another year like 2010 where a lot of pollster just never detected the voter outrage coming.

Update: Signs, signs, everywhere signs:

The indispensable Dave Wasserman at Cook Political Report has put together a detailed spreadsheet breaking down Virginia absentee voting by county. The bottom line: while, compared with four years ago, absentee voting is off just about 1 percent in generally Republican counties that went for John McCain in 2008 , it’s down nearly 14 percent in counties that went for Obama. Wasserman cautions that these numbers don’t necessarily spell doom for Obama. But they are a troubling early indicator.

No, I would say that spells doom…

Update 2: Yep, more signs, this time in Ohio:

There are now 23 counties in which the percentage of the 2008/2012 early voting ratio equals or exceeds 80 percent.  McCain carried 17 of them, and the six Obama carried are still those in the eastern, blue collar part of the state.  Cincinnati exurban counties Brown and Warren now report their early votes equal 99 and 93 percent, respectively, of the 2008 early vote percentage.

 Large, big margin Obama counties remain at the bottom of the early voting ratio.  Summit (Akron), Lucas (Toledo), Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus) are all near the bottom of this analysis, with between 67 and 69 percent of the 2008 early vote percentage already cast in 2012. 

Barack Obama is clearly winning the early vote in Ohio. But careful analysis of the actual numbers so far suggest very good news for Mitt Romney.

And do I need to note where Mitt Romney will be this weekend?

AllahPundit at Hot Air put it quite well yesterday:

In other words, the dam that O’s built among early voters simply isn’t tall enough to hold back the red tide next Tuesday.

Neither is the fire wall Obama built able to hold back the tide. Yesterday I posted on how the tide was turning and making states like PA, MI, MN and even OR purple. These are not the only places where we see the 2012 wave rising to wipe out the 2008 wave. There are numerous signs of a rising tide in the bluest of blue states:

In 2008, Connecticut went for Obama by 22 points. The latest Mason-Dixon poll has Obama up by just 7.
In 2008, Michigan went for Obama by 17 points. The latest Detroit News poll has Obama up by just 3.
In 2008, Minnesota went for Obama by 11 points. The latest Minneapolis Star Tribune poll has Obama up by just 3.
In 2008, Oregon went for Obama by 16. The latest Oregonian poll has Obama up just 6.
In 2008, Pennsylvania went for Obama by 10. The latest Morning Call poll has Obama up by just 3.

No doubt Obama is sinking and the 2010 insurgent vote is still out there. And if you think the last round of polls were indicative of an Obama resurgence, suggest you read this insightful post by Bob Krumm

Update 3: The folks over at Powerline rip Quinnipiac and their mind boggling fictional turnout model:

discount the Quinnipiac results, however, because its sample consists of 35 percent Democrats and 28 percent Republicans. That’s a better split for the Dems than they enjoyed in 2008. There is little reason to believe that the Democrats will have that sort of advantage this year.

The Qunnipiac poll finds that Romney leads among independent voters in Virginia by a staggering 57-36 margin. If Romney actually does enjoy an edge of that magnitude with Virginia independents (and Roanoke College gives him an even larger 26 point edge) it seems almost inconceivable that he will lose the Commonwealth.

Oh pullease. I can tell you the Dems are not going to enjoy the same turnout as in 2008. They did not in 2009 or 2010. If anything, Quinnipiac’s statistical foolery simply confirms the Roanoke College poll results. Obama and the Dems are facing a tsunami backlash like 2010 – except much more focused at The Won!

Update 2: Wow, Dem turnout depressed 70% in FL early voting:

And now we have hard numbers out of Florida showing Democrats well behind their early vote lead when compared to this time last year:

But a Republican yesterday noted that at this point in 2008, Democrats held a 134,774-vote lead in Florida. As of yesterday. Democrats led by less than 41,000 – a nearly 70 percent drop.

The Obama campaign does not dispute those numbers.

Update 1: One polling firm plans to leave its reputation on the floor:

Oh, let’s just skip the rest of the preliminaries and go right to the sample.  The D/R/I on this poll is a ridiculous 45/36/19 that assumes Democrats will add six points to their 2008 turnout while independents largely stay home.  In 2008, recall, the exit polls showed the electorate at 39/31/30, and the 2010 midterm put it at 36/37/28.  Has anyone produced any evidence of such a wave of Democratic enthusiasm?

All those statistical gymnastics to eek out a 50-45% lead for Obama. Who do they think they are kidding? Nat Silver?  – end update

As usual, something happens with polls in the last week before an election to cause them to converge closer to the final result. Is it people finally accepting polling calls? Is it reputations on the line which need to be shored up before the vote so a poll can live to produce another cycle? Who knows. But we are in the final stretch, and the fog is slowly lifting.

Interestingly, both Jay Cost and Sean Trende had posts up in the last 24 hours wondering which picture of the election was going to be more accurate – the state or national polls. Here is Trende on the matter:

Given what we know about how individual states typically lean with respect to the popular vote, a Republican enjoying a one-point lead nationally should expect a three-to-four-point lead in Florida, a two-to-three-point lead in Ohio, and a tie in Iowa. Instead we see Romney ahead by roughly one point in Florida, and down by two in Ohio and Iowa.

…

You can poke holes in this model, to be sure, but I think the simplest explanation is that the state and national polls really are saying different things, at least for now. In other words, if you are calling for the state polls to be right, you are pretty much necessarily calling for the national polls to be wrong, and vice versa.

He added this key observation:

But what if there is a huge surge in Republican voting? Well, this would be felt across all states, at least somewhat, and should be turning the purple states red.

…

For now, I think the best thing to do is wait, and to remember that there is probably more uncertainty in this election than partisans on either side would care to admit.

Jay Cost sees the same thing, applies a different analysis, comes to a similar conclusion:

There is a peculiar divergence between various public opinion polls at the moment. On the one hand, Mitt Romney has built a narrow but durable lead in the national polls, averaging around a 1 percent advantage over the last three weeks. This has cheered the hearts of conservatives everywhere.

Yet, liberals retort, Obama has a lead in enough swing states to add up to 270 electoral votes, and that is really what matters.

What to make of this?

For starters, they cannot both be right.

Cost shows some poll distributions that indicate there are two different turnout models running across pollsters – one group of which is bullish on Democrat turnout meeting or exceeding 2008 levels, the other a little more based in reality.. I don’t see Dem’s increasing their intensity from 2008 , unless those Dems turning out are also switching from Obama to Romney.

Anyway, the real answer is wait and see. And today these gentlemen get a hint at the answer. First in Michigan:

Obama’s lead over Romney has shrunk to just under 3 points, 47.7 percent to 45 percent, with 3.8 percent undecided, according to a new Detroit News/WDIV Local 4 poll of likely voters. Obama’s lead was 6.7 points earlier this month and has eroded to within the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error. It’s the smallest advantage for the Democratic president during the Michigan campaign.

Obama is, once again, at 47% one week out. Broken record time: for an incumbent US President 47% spells probable defeat. So this blue state has just turned bright purple, meaning this state is trending towards the national polls.

Now onto Pennsylvania:

Less than a week before election day, the Franklin and Marshall College Poll shows Romney now trailing Obama by just four percentage points among likely Pennsylvania voters – 45-percent to 49-percent, compared to a nine point deficit in a September F&M survey.

Blue to Purple.

These states which were once supposedly out of reach are now competitive. This should enhance the pro-Romney turnout on election day even more, now these voters have a chance to send a message to DC. All the while the Obama voters may be sitting back a bit too complacent or ambivalent.

Finally, a crazy poll out of Virginia – where even Hot Air did not want to run with the ‘most likely voter’ result.

Governor Mitt Romney has overtaken President Barack Obama by a very narrow margin in Virginia (49% – 44%), according to a Roanoke College Poll conducted after the Presidential debates.

…

Employing a more stringent screen for likely voters (N=503) increases Romney’s lead to 54 percent to 41 percent …

54-41% in Purple VA? Well, if Sean Trende needs to see a purple state turn red, here is my home state as evidence.

I am mot at all surprised over this result. The year after Obama won the 2008 election and took Virginia, buyers’ remorse had settled into the Old Dominion. That year, 2009, Virginia went to the polls to elect a new governor. Up until the Obama win the state had been turning bluer and bluer, with 8 years of Democrat Governors previously. That year, Republican Bob McDonnell won the election 58-41%.

McDonnell’s 2009 numbers look very similar to Romney’s in this poll. So I don’t think it is far fetched at all.

Also note the coat tails:

Employing a more stringent screen for likely voters (N=503) increases … [GOP Senate Candidate George} Allen’s lead to 51 percent to 39 percent. …

I am still bullish on this election. And I just don’t think it will be the nail biter everyone claims it is.

Tags: 2012 elections, MI, PA, Polls, VA

The reality of the last 4 years of the Obama administration is starting to come crashing down on the left wing echo chambers in DC, NY and San Francisco. Obama’s firewall of swing states is folding like a domino set made of cheap lawn chairs. It is so bad warning signs are flaring up in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and now even Oregon.

Let’s begin in Oregon with another case of Obama holding a big lead, but sitting right at the sure to lose level of support (47%):

Barack Obama won the West Coast state in a Pacific breeze four years ago, 57/41, but today can’t get above 47%with just seven days to go:It shows Obama leading Romney 47 percent to 41 percent, with 8 percent undecided. Three percent of voters said they would vote for someone else and 1 percent said they would not vote in the race.
When an incumbent Democrat can’t get to 50% in a deeply blue state like Oregon, that’s a bad sign.

A sitting President stuck below 50% one week out is really bad. I can’t over state how bad this is. The MoE on this poll is 5%, so it could be misleading, but if Obama is sinking in Oregon, he is heading towards a big loss come next week.

The other shocker poll out this week was from Gallup which showed Governor Romney blowing President Obama away in early voting: 52-46%. Ground game get-out-the-vote (GOTV) was supposed to bolster the Presidents firewall. It is not working,

Another sign of trouble is in Pennsylvania, where Romney is making in roads and team Obama is playing the boy trying to plug holes in the dike:

Not only has Minnesota has been moved to “Lean Dem” and the Obama Campaign is  up in that state with a significant television buy, but the Chicago gurus have  heeded Governor Rendell’s plea and are buying television in Pennsylvania and sending the Vice-President in to help prop up their flagging campaign.

With one week to go, and 96% of the vote on the table on Election Day in Pennsylvania, this expansion of the electoral map demonstrates that Governor Romney’s momentum has jumped containment from the usual target states and has spread to deeper blue states that Chicago never anticipated defending.

Just amazing. As I said way back before the polls turned, there was a very strong and silent Tea Party Libertarian backlash coming this election cycle. The 2010 insurgent voter was not satiated during the last congress. Far from it. People are fed up with Democrat government-only solutions that screw up so badly they make things ten times worse than they would have been if left alone (reference: Obama’s mountain of generational debt ON TOP OF our crippled economy, lost jobs and vaporized wealth).

Pollsters are only able to get something like 10% of the electorate to respond to polls. So it is not surprising the error bars on this election cycle are enormous. I think the Political Industrial Complex is going to be shocked come November 7th. This is not a pro Romney, pro GOP election. Which is why the polls are not registering the intensity of the wave coming to DC.

Update: I like this analysis over at RCP to a point.

A wave election is something you can generally see coming, rising above the surface, crushing everything in its path. But an undertow election isn’t something you can see. It pulls underneath the surface with sudden strength, sucking away a base of support thought to be reliable, the ground evaporating underneath you as you claw to stay afloat. It’s maddening for campaigns when voters you had counted as baked in to your models decide they have something better to do on Tuesday. Bush experienced this because of a news story. The Obama campaign may be experiencing something similar now – which may explain their strategic flailing over the past few weeks.

OK – wave or undertow I am not sure I see a distinction, except that the pollsters and the political class are living in another dimension, one  created out of the bubble that is the beltway mind think. The point is, the polls are all over the place because the models cannot represent what is happening because elections like this don’t happen but once a century.

Tags: 2012 Election, Polls

You know, this new poll math is pretty silly. Apparently 2+2 = +1 Obama (every time). As Ed Morrissey points out, if the turn out/sample models were aligned to some semblance of reality then it probably looks like a Romney win.

If Romney wins independents by 15, and the gender gap by 2, how can he only be leading by one overall? Simple — the Post/ABC sample has a declining number of Republicans in its sample.  Today’s rolling three-day average has a D/R/I of 35/28/34, which would put Republicans at seven points below their 2010 turnout and five points below their 2008 turnout.  Two days ago, the sample was D+4 at 34/30, but now it’s D+7.

Look at those numbers for a second and just marvel at the lack of reality. In an anti-Obama year, when the GOP has the opportunity to take the House, Senate and President – especially after 4 years of economic hell which typically turns out incumbents – the least likely to turn out are GOP voters (28%)? Independents and Democrats will be the most engaged and energized this year?

Not in this reality.

I would say left-of-center Democrats are disillusioned and either will sit home or defect to Romney. Independents who have awoken from their 2008 Kool Aid are either going to sit out or switch to Romney. Only the rabid far left (making up 20-25% of the electorate) is panicked enough to be energized to try and save this failed administration.

60% of the electorate feels the country is off track, which means they don’t want 4 more years. The reality is Obama has little chance to pull out of this tail spin. I am just curious how badly he will lose, by a little or a lot?

So let’s do some recalculations. Yesterday Rasmussen listed the candidate support by party ID:

• Obama takes 86% of Democrats (leaving up to 14% to go to Romney)
• Romney takes 90% of Republicans (leavinup to g 10% to go to Obama)
• Romney led Independents by 11% (so we could assume a 54-43% split)

If we use these allocations, and assume no one goes to another candidate, we can compute the maximum number (the ceiling) each candidate can obtain under various turn out models.

If we assume a D/R/I of 33-33-33 (all equal with no edge to any group) the results would be 52% Romney and 45% Obama (which interestingly is very close to the result from the latest Battleground Poll of 52-47%).

If we use the ABC News D/R/I (35-38-34) and the lead with independents (55-40) that Morrissey was analyzing, the results is 49% Romney to 46% Obama! For Obama to get a point ahead of Romney (48-49) in this poll means some amazing statistical gymnastics. Note that I am computing independents going 55-40 Romney, but I did not change the 86% of Dems for Obama or 90% of GOP for Romney. Honesty, I could not get to an Obama 48-49 lead with the independent numbers quoted (55-40). No reasonable combination of party base win-loss gets me there, so whatever they did is pretty wild.

Update: Was being interrupted over and over while writing this post, so I somehow flipped who had the lead (it is Romney +1, not Obama). I still cannot get the numbers to come out right for the ABC News poll assuming a range of party base win-loss scenarios while holding to the 15% lead with independents. So I still maintain Romney is more likely to be way ahead than tied. Anyway, may try and clean up the rest of the post if I have time. – end update

Let’s do another experiment. Let’s use Rasmussen’s party base numbers, but calculate the result using Rasmussen’s party ID for September 2012 (36.8-34.2-29). When we compute the result Romney would win 51-46%. Again, very close to the latest Battleground Poll prediction.

And if we use Gallup’s D/R/I for 2012 (37-39-24) then the result is 51-49% Romney.

Honestly, there is no realistic computation that comes out with Obama ahead. And many come out showing a landslide for Romney (you don’t win by 5+% and have a close electoral college result). I am still very bullish on this election, bizarre polls aside. The Obama administration and its allies keep putting out propaganda that the race is closer than it probably is. Basically, a high Democrat turn out does not equate to Obama win, especially if the turn out is from disaffected center-left Dems voting for Romney.

I think this is the year the pollsters are going to be exposed as being much less reliable than everyone assumed.

What better way to rally the public to an incumbent President, prior to an election, than to raise the specter of a nation under attack?

George W Bush became a rallying point after 9-11 as he threaded a serious and lasting response to one of the worst attacks on this nation in living memory. John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington and others are images of Presidents protecting a beleaguered nation from outside forces of evil. Even a hesitant President Obama (after three calls to stand down) took action against Bin Laden in Pakistan and (behind the cover of an illegal UN edict) Colonel Qadaffi of Libya.

So, if President and you are concerned about reelection, would you ever consider something as “out there” as inviting an attack so you could rally the nation prior to an election?

Seems to horrific to even consider.

But as I noted in a prior post, what bothers me most about the Benghazi incident are the months of warning signs from repeated attacks, repeated reports of al Qaeda in the region and even the British pull out from down the street. This in tandem with not only calls for more security, but the actual removal of security resources leaving an obviously vulnerable target right out there for any dumb terrorist to act upon.

Why did this happen this way? Are we so far from the George W Bush days of erring on the side of caution we don’t even leave existing security resources in place as we head into a pivotal election and another 9-11 anniversary?

Seems far fetched. About as far fetched as letting guns loose on the streets sot they get into the hands of drug lords. Possibly to use the ensuing carnage to push for gun ownership restrictions. That is pretty out there too.

So I keep trying to put this nagging scenario to rest and get away from crazy conspiracy theories. But then I see new like this and I fall back into the opinion something seriously wrong happened in Benghazi:

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

This is insane. Reinforcements were a mile away? A possible flanking or rear action attack could have thrown the attackers into disarray – and probable retreat. You don’t even have to really engage as much as divert. I see NO reason for not letting these resources at least do recon.

I guess there is the Black Hawk Down angle, where criminal incompetence led to unnecessary death. But there are other worse scenarios. And those still bother me, mainly because they are not too far fetched after all.

Update: With a Recon Marine as a son, the latest news exposing how on-hand support was deliberately stopped from intervening in the Benghazi massacre is more than just a little disturbing:

The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

…

You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.