ELECTIONATE SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
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Would Romney get a 3-point bounce or a 5-point bounce? That was the question heading into Romney’s acceptance speech last Thursday. While sparse polling over Labor Day added to the uncertainty, the question today has changed. Did Romney even get a bounce at all?
The national tracking polls show the race exactly where they’ve shown it since the spring and the few state polls are largely consistent with pre-convention polling. If you squint hard enough, there’s a case that Romney improved slightly; but his small gains are not clear enough to be distinguished from static.
For months, Gallup and Rasmussen have shown a tight race and a narrow Romney lead, respectively; today, Gallup and Rasmussen show a tight race and a narrow Romney lead, respectively. While Rasmussen saw a shift in Romney’s direction, it was only in comparison to the anomalous finding that Obama led by as much as 3 points prior to the RNC. In contrast, Gallup hasn’t shown any movement in Romney’s favor and, if anything, actually shows Obama gaining 2 points, with the president settling into a 1-point lead.
In my view, this afternoon’s CNN poll showing a tied race among likely voters is largely consistent with the view that Romney didn’t receive much of a bounce, if any. While a tied race among likely voters and a 7-point edge among registered voters represents a 2-point Romney gain from CNN’s prior survey, Obama’s 7 point edge among registered voters is exactly the same as it was a month ago and better than all but one of CNN’s polls since Romney secured the Republican nomination.
Some have cited Reuters/Ipsos as a sign of a Romney bounce, but a closer look shows that nearly all of Romney’s gains came prior to the heart of the RNC. Since Romney’s speech, the Reuters/Ipsos poll hasn’t shown any clear movement. And whatever the merits of the Reuters/Ipsos poll, it’s a new poll introduced immediately prior to the conventions, which makes it harder to judge if the shifts in the survey are typical static, or real divergence from a longer-term trend. That’s especially important with Romney’s gains coming prior to his own speech.
The state polling is convoluted as well, but here there is some evidence for a slight Romney bounce. It’s largely on this basis that Nate Silver concludes that Romney gained between two-and-a-half and three points. But there are strong reasons to question the use of these state polls in judging Romney’s bounce. First, the state polls conducted before the RNC are a little too old. All but one of the previous polls were conducted prior to Paul Ryan’s selection as Romney’s running mate, which appeared to reduce Obama’s margin by 1 or 2 points among registered voters. So while it’s defensible to rely on these PPP polls to argue that Romney has gained 2 or 3 points since late July or early August, it’s not clear that Romney gained 2 or 3 points as a result of the convention.
Second, even if the polls had been conducted immediately prior to the convention, the baseline for comparison isn’t as well established as the national trackers. After months of daily polls from Gallup and Rasmussen, we have an extremely good idea of the “normal” results for these surveys. But it’s harder to argue that PPP’s tied race in North Carolina, for instance, represents a “gain” for Romney. In Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado, PPP had only released one previous likely voter survey, while PPP hadn’t even conducted a single likely voter survey in Michigan. Attempts to include more data in the baseline just wind up including previous registered voter surveys, which might well have the effect of inflating Romney’s bounce.The only state poll with a decent baseline comes from SurveyUSA, which showed Romney jumping out to a 3-point lead in North Carolina, compared to a tied race a few weeks ago. But that SurveyUSA poll reflected Obama’s best showing in months, and their prior poll showed Romney up 5 points.
But perhaps this is the simplest test: in the absence of the Republican National Convention, would anyone interpret these polls as signs pointing toward the possibility of recent movement in Romney’s direction? I wouldn't, and Nate Silver’s model seems to agree: The recent movement in the “Now-cast” is indistinguishable from similar bumps and valleys over the last few months. It's telling that the reason we're arguing about a bounce isn't because of some new poll, but instead because there was a convention last week, so analysts presume that the slightest trends in the data point toward genuine movement that would otherwise be dismissed as static. In the absence of better data, the responsible position is that it's unclear whether Romney received a bounce. But the fact that Romney's bounce was difficult to discern, at best, suggests there might not have even been one.
As noted last week, there is only a weak relationship between the size of a post-convention bounce and Election Day performance. And historically the incumbent’s standing post-convention is more important than the challenger’s, so Obama’s position next week will be of greater importance than Romney’s position today. Romney’s weak bounce could either be a sign of deep weakness that Obama can exploit this week, or a sign that Obama won’t receive a bounce either in this highly polarized political climate. But the fact that Romney wasn’t able to take a lead following his convention should still be troubling for Boston. No modern candidate has won the presidency without seizing a lead following their own convention, and while that should not be interpreted as an ironclad rule, it’s still a sign that he could be in some trouble.
9 comments
Hell, even Mondale caught up to Reagan after Mondale's convention (which was before Reagan's). Either the jobs numbers have to tank or Romney has to have the best debates he ever had or both, otherwise the next two months will be just torture as we watch him implode. Love that Rasmussen trick they did, give Obama a once in a long time lead then take it away claiming a big Romney bounce. How corrupt are they?
- blackton
September 4, 2012 at 7:04pm
How could he get a bounce out of that disaster - a convention whose theme was a blatant out of context, heavily edited clip of the President? A carnival of douchebaggery featuring guys in bow ties and cowboy hats screaming "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the Latina representative from Puerto Rico, and 2 "attendees" throwing peanuts at an African American CNN camera woman -and quipping "That's how we feed the animals." And the climax, no not the nominee's eminently forgettable speech, but an old coot yelling at an empty chair, yeah that's the way to rock the vote. Isaac should have hit Tampa and spared Mitt that fiasco.
- dubyadoubte
September 4, 2012 at 9:21pm
But Romney still leads. Right now it looks like the majority of the American electorate is dumber than dirt. How can we survive as a free nation, when there are so many uninformed, mean-spirited people among us? Answer: we can't.
- magboy47.
September 5, 2012 at 1:52am
I agree most of any "bounce" was absorbed by the ludicrous yet telling performance of Clint. In his senescence, he revealed that the Obama the Republican Party hates so much, is in fact an empty chair, their own invention of him as the ultimate Liberal Socialist Tax-And-Spend Anti-Gun Democrat. Obama doesn't live there, that doesn't match his policies, that doesn't match what he's done, nor what he proposes to do. Meanwhile, the more we learn about Romney/Ryan, the more objectionable their policies and personalities are. Clueless rich-boys, chasing profits over productivity, with policies robbing from the poor to give to the rich. As time goes by, I hope this becomes even more clear.
- AllanL5
September 5, 2012 at 10:10am
At this point, it seems to me that Romney can only outpace Obama due to some combination of the following: (i) an unanticipated worsening in the European economic picture due to Greece's abrupt exit from the Euro, which leads to a major stock market drop in the US which is not promptly and effectively addressed by reserve bank action in the US, Europe and elsewhere -- presumably something that happens in the last three weeks of October, as something that happens before then could probably be alleviated by crisis action on behalf of reserve banks; (ii) a major terrorist attack against the US or a major natural disaster some time before mid-October, which is coupled with a noticeably poor response from the Federal government; (iii) a surprise Israeli attack on Iran some time in the next month or so, which is followed not by Iranian reprisals against the US (those would surely help Obama unless the US response was grossly mismanaged) but by public finger-pointing between the US and Israel; or (iv) a major gaffe or series of gaffes by Obama in one or more debates with Romney. Anything short of those kinds of game-changers -- somewhat disappointing job numbers, low GDP growth, inability of the Fed to take decisive action to ease economic pressures, muddling along in the Euro Zone crisis, Syrian civil wars, Iranian/Israeli rhetorical warfare and spy games, unsurprising debates -- is just perpetuating the status quo, which is not in Romney's favor.
- wildboy
September 5, 2012 at 11:36am
I suspect that much of the back and forth mini-movements in the polls that we're obsessing over are statistical artifacts, introduced by each pollster's algorithm for translating "registered voters" into "people who will actually show up on election day." Hardly anybody's changing their mind, they're just waffling back and forth as to whether they'll bother to vote. And there lies the possibility of a rather lopsided win for Obama. He's got way more ground troops out there than the Repuginicans do. Romney is depending heavily on people with a visceral hatred of Obama. There are quite a few such folks out there, but we already know how many there are and where they are located. And Romney has been singularly unsuccessful in creating new ones. So now Romney has to convince more thoughtful people that he's a better candidate. The first part of that is convincing them that he's an actual human being. This is clearly not the case, so he really has his work cut out for him. If he gets locked into a sincerity slugfest, he's toast. I remain convinced that the final electoral college margin will be 100-plus in Obama's favor.
- gwcross
September 5, 2012 at 12:34pm
I suspect and hope you're right, wildboy, though I'd add unanticipated developments to your good list of potential anticipated ones. Before Romney picked Ryan, I was quite concerned that even a decent debate performance from Mitt could be enough to put him over the top by convincing enough people that he was in fact a plausible alternative to a president with a poor economic record. Now I'm more cautiously optimistic, in that the campaign and debates are no longer just a referendum on Obama but a comparison between Obama and Romney-Ryan. And that comparison works out more poorly for Mitt. The two factors that still concern me the most are the potential for the Republicans to suppress voter turnout in key states and to significantly outspend the Democrats.
- Thunderroad
September 5, 2012 at 12:57pm
Thunder, good points about voter turnout and spending. However, most political science evidence on the spending point has shown that it doesn't make much of a difference at the Presidential level, as the parties are and will be at something like rough parity in terms of Presidential-level spending (and, in any event, not many people are going to change their minds about Romney or Obama at this point in the absence of new developments or credible new information). Where the spending could make a difference is at the Senate level, by making the prospects for some otherwise vulnerable or mediocre Republican candidates (e.g., in North Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, Indiana or Massachusetts) safer or better, and obviously as insulation for marginal Republican incumbents at the Congressional level. That's where Democrats have to deploy their money, or at least their ground game -- to elect or re-elect Dems to retain the Senate and make strong progress in the House (if not win it back outright). As for voter suppression, the jury is still out on that one. Some of the worst voter-suppression efforts in Texas, Ohio and Florida have been shot down by courts, while others are still standing but subject to pending challenges (as in PA). There is little real political science evidence on how effective voter ID and similar laws are in practice, and also not totally clear whether they will have a clearly partisan effect -- for every urban Democratic voter who is denied the right to vote because he lacks a valid driver's license there is a rural Republican voter whose license expired or who is now in a nursing home and lacks the new ID. On top of that, the emerging view among voting advocates is to push people to take the necessary steps to obtain new ID's and otherwise register, regardless of how onerous it might be -- and to just vote absentee if all else fails.
- wildboy
September 5, 2012 at 1:10pm
A bounce always seemed unlikely to me, simply because we're polarized. Likewise, I doubt Obama will see much movement after his speech. The bigger issue for Romney is that they're a step behind. The RNC essentially tried to improve Romney's favorability, which I thought they did well. But the Romney campaign should have tried to do that a month or more ago. Now the DNC is hammering Romney with damaging specificity, meaning the debates are being set up to make Romney defensive. There will be gradual and slight move to Obama, punctuated by Romney gaffes. Only significant economic deterioration can help Romney now--and is the only real threat to Obama.
- polcereal
September 5, 2012 at 4:30pm