ELECTIONATE OCTOBER 10, 2012
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After early polls hinted at both signs of tightening and a persistent bounce, the late afternoon polls indicated that Romney was still riding his post-debate wave.
The Fox News survey showed Romney leading by 1 point among likely voters, a 6 point shift from their prior poll and joining Pew as a live interview pollster that calls cell phones showing significant national movement in Romney’s direction. Additionally, state polls from Rasmussen and PPP showed Romney making gains in Nevada, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Notably, all of these surveys were conducted well after the debate, suggesting that Romney’s bounce lasted well into this week. On average, today’s polls showed Romney gaining by 3.6 points compared to a pre-debate counterpart, suggesting that Romney was doing about as well today as he was over the entire post-debate period, when more interviews were conducted immediately after the debate.
There is one poll offering better news for the president: the YouGov/Economist survey showing Obama leading by 3 points, 49-46. Of course, YouGov/Economist is different in another respect; it’s an internet pollster with a track record. More on this later.
If there was any other silver lining for the president, it was the continuing hints of a split between battleground and national surveys. Despite a wave of national polls showing Romney with the lead, there hasn’t been a battleground state poll showing Romney leading in a battleground state since ARG showed Romney ahead in Ohio and Colorado. Since then, multiple polls have shown Obama leading in Nevada and Ohio—two states sufficient to get Obama over the top when combined with Wisconsin, another state where two post-debate polls show Obama in the lead.
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To a certain extent, Obama’s persistent advantage in the battleground states isn’t surprising. In pre-debate polls, Obama led by at least 5 points in states worth 281 electoral votes, including Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Nevada. If Romney has gained about 4 points, then Obama would retain a slight lead in these states. But the conclusion that Romney has only gained 4 points is largely based on these state polls, since the national surveys suggest that Romney has gained at least 5 points, which should have been enough to yield a few more polls showing Romney ahead in states like Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada.
Over the day, NBC/WSJ/Marist and CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac will add their findings in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, and Colorado to this discussion. In the past, these surveys have shown Obama performing very well, but so had Pew Research and Fox News. There haven’t been very many live-interview, cell phone surveys of the battleground states (especially if you have reservations about ARG), so it will be interesting to see whether they show Obama holding his own in the battleground states, as well.
7 comments
There have been several reports of surveys showing Democrats as a bit less enthusiastic than Republicans, and thus less likely to vote. These stories have dealt with national surveys. But then there's this "split between battleground and national surveys" Mr. Cohn speaks of. Might the explanation be that Democrats in swing states feel their votes will actually matter, while some Democrats in states such as Alabama or California (which, respectively, Obama is sure to lose and win) feel their vote won't count? You might ask why Republicans in those states don't feel that way in equal measure. My explanations are (a) Repubs have had this rage building up for 4 years and want to give vent to it, even if their state isn't up for grabs, and (b) Democrats are more rational than Republicans. Are there any studies showing that voters in swing states are generally more enthusiastic than voters in "solid states" [to coin a phrase]??
- bjones
October 10, 2012 at 11:18pm
The enthusiasm gap, to me, says we should add two or three polling points to Romney, even in the swing states. The president blew it, big time.
- scrubby
October 11, 2012 at 7:39am
I suppose this is the ongoing horse-race analogy. I find it hard to believe that Romney's "bounce", based on 27 lies, will survive for long. It's only been a week and a day since the debate, after all. Not to mention, with 7.8% unemployment, the last 3.5 years of economic growth have finally brought us back to where the economy had been in December 2008 -- only without the free-fall that lost 800,000 jobs a month until June 2009, when the recovery began. And that recovery was based on the successful TARP and Stimulus plans -- NOT Romney's draconian "let them fail and the Free Market will sort it out".
- AllanL5
October 11, 2012 at 8:49am
Nah, scrub. Debates don't matter that much. Obama will win. Wanna bet on it?
- AaronW
October 11, 2012 at 9:33am
Of course the President blew the debate, and of course Democrats as a whole are now less enthusiastic about his re-election chances than Republicans are about Romney's. But it's really no mystery about why Democrats in swing states are more enthusiastic about the election than Democrats nationwide, and it isn't simply because they know their votes will count whereas those of Democrats in non-competitive states don't. It's that the Democrats in swing states are constantly exposed to a barrage of pro-Obama information on television, radio and in-person canvassing, to a degree that is way beyond the exposure of Democrats in non-swing states. Those Democrats are left to educate themselves about the election through network of cable TV news (free of political ads in most cases, except for the occasional SuperPAC ad -- which tend to be mostly Republican SuperPACs, as the Democratic ones are concentrating on competitive states and races), or the Internet, where the discussion of the last week has been about Obama's stunning flop and Romney's rise. They aren't really getting a lot of pro-Obama reinforcement for their views, especially where MSNBC and liberal bloggers are constantly wringing their hands about Obama. So why shouldn't at least some of them start feeling down on the President, without any counter-programming to the "Romney is dominant" narrative?
- wildboy
October 11, 2012 at 11:05am
No, Aaron, I won't put my money on my fears and nervousnes. I hope you are right that Obama will win, but I think the down-ballot races we had a chance to convert over to the Democratic column can now be kissed goodbye. Thanks, to our professorial president.
- scrubby
October 11, 2012 at 12:09pm
"Thanks to our professorial president", it should read.
- scrubby
October 11, 2012 at 12:51pm